


Not Really A One Night Stand

by thebestdayisme



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Normal Life, Domestic Castiel/Dean Winchester, F/M, From Sex to Love, Genderbending, POV Dean Winchester, POV Female Character, Slow Build, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-14
Updated: 2014-07-26
Packaged: 2018-02-08 18:42:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 34,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1951998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebestdayisme/pseuds/thebestdayisme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was cold. No, the sheets beneath me were cold.  I open one eye and look around the room. It’s not mine, or any of my friends. Oh God where the fuck am I?<br/>There’s a sound from another room, it sounds like running water and I sit up. My head protests to everything, the light, the noise (from what obviously sounds like a kitchen), and from all the shots I slammed down last night. Oh God what the fuck happened last night?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Song Remains the Same

It was cold. No, the sheets beneath me were cold. I open one eye and look around the room. It’s not mine, or any of my friends. Oh God where the fuck am I? There’s a sound from another room, it sounds like running water and I sit up. My head protests to everything, the light, the noise (from what obviously sounds like a kitchen), and from all the shots I slammed down last night. Oh God what the fuck happened last night?  
I look down at myself and my bra and underwear are still on…that could mean hope. I almost laugh a little, the person I must have come home with would have thought my Spiderman panties were freakin’ cute. I start to smell breakfast coming from the kitchen and I decide it’s time to get out. I know how long a one night stand stays over, and I’ve clearly reached the limit. I slide out of the bed and grab my things from last night. It’s harder to get into the dress I wore last night, considering Jo and Charlie had to help me into in. Well when I say help they more than kind of forced me. It’s a darker green than my eyes and slinky and I have no idea why other girls choose to wear things like this, it’s fucking hard to breathe.  
My jacket goes on next, it’s worn and old but the leather keeps me warm and who the hell cares what I look like? I’m not trying to impress anyone. Next I smile and pull on my combat boots; I kind of do pull off the whole ‘badass chick’ look. I try to the close the bedroom door as quietly as I can and when I turn around there’s blue eyes staring back at me. I scream. “Sorry.” The man blushes and smiles at me, “I didn’t mean to scare you.” his smile is amazing.  
“It’s fine.” For the life of me I can’t remember his name, but his eyes are distracting me from the fact that I should probably leave now.  
“Would you care to stay for breakfast? It’s almost noon but I woke up probably ten minutes ago so it counts.”  
I stop myself before I say yes, he’s probably just being nice, or hoping I’ll be a ‘booty call’ as Charlie puts it. “No thank you, I have to be leaving.” Sammy would be glad I remembered my manners.  
“Alright,” I pretend I don’t see his face fall a little bit, but it perks back up and he turns around, “I’ll show you out.” His apartment is bigger than I expected, but I didn’t know what to expect. He opens the front door and I slip out, “Hey Dean?”  
I turn back to him, a shiver goes up my spine and I feel my stomach swirl with stupid butterflies that won’t digest. I ignore the fact that he knows my name, of course he does. I woke up in his apartment didn’t I? I just can’t remember his, “Yeah?”  
“I didn’t take advantage of you last night if that’s what you were thinking.” He’s not smiling anymore but he doesn’t look sad, he looks concerned, like if I thought he was a bad guy it’d break his heart, “Charlie was going to leave with someone and Jo was nowhere in sight so Charlie asked me to come get you. You weren’t even making coherent noises, so I let you sleep it off in my bed and I slept on the couch. Scouts honor.”  
“Then why did I wake up in my underwear and bra?” I raise an eyebrow at him and his face turns red. I stop him before he can start stuttering because let’s be honest, he looks like he’s going to have a heart attack. “It’s fine, that’s how I sleep most of the time.”  
“What’s the rest of the time?”  
“None of you business.” He doesn’t say anything after that, it starts to get awkward with me standing in the hallway and him staring at me like he never wants me to leave. “Uh, how does Charlie even know you?”  
“I’m Anna’s brother.” He smiled sadly, “They were kind of cute together you know? Up until…” he trailed off and looked away from my eyes.  
“Castiel?” my tongue trips over the weird name and I flinch at how it sounds, “Dude is that really your name?” He jerks his head up and I realize that he’d been checking me out. I smirk at him and he blushes even deeper than before. “Well that sucks for you; I’m going to call you Cas.”  
“So you’re going to call me?” he tries for smooth but it comes out with a break in his voice and I almost laugh right there.  
“Don’t have your number.” I pat my jacket pocket where my phone should be and I freeze, “Shit.”  
“What?” he looks alarmed.  
I try to look relaxed and calm, “Have you see my phone around? It’s in one of those wallet things.”  
“Wallet things? No I don’t think I’ve seen anything like that, but I haven’t been in my bedroom yet today…so maybe?” he scrunches up his face, it’s almost cute but I look around his shoulders and into the apartment I was just trying to escape. “Do you want to…?” he lets his question fall short and I sigh.  
“Yeah.” He moves out of my way and closes the door behind him. “So Anna?” I say when it becomes too quiet for my liking.  
Cas looks down and me and shrugs, “Haven’t seen her in a year.” He leads me back towards his bedroom and I feel a since of de ja vue and I know it’s because he must have carried me back here last night but I can’t help myself thinking about those blue eyes on mine. “I mean she calls, but it hasn’t been the same since she left for Europe. She’s kind of a snob.”  
“I’m going to tell Charlie that.” Cas opens his bedroom door and I follow him and my stupid mind wants to think about his hands on my waist and I feel myself blush all over. He goes to the bed and starts to look in the sheets and I get down on my hands and knees to look under the bed. “Do you know if I had it last night?”  
“No idea-ow!” he jumps off the bed and I pick my head up. “You left an ear ring.” Instantly my hands go to my ears and I groan. I will never find the back. I reach out my hand for it but he continues to stare at it. “This looks just like my tattoo.”  
I stand all the way up and realize that it’s my angel wing one. “You’re inked?” he nods and I raise an eyebrow, “Can I see?” my phone, for the moment, is completely forgotten. Cas unzips his hoodie and in just his T-shirt I can see a few lines marking his arms, but those aren’t the ones I want to see. He turns around then and pulls off his shirt. My mouth does not go dry that the thought of Castiel willingly taking off his clothes for me. “Can I?” Cas nods and I trace the outline of his wings on his back. They’re massive and delicate and they run from his shoulders blades, to his shoulders, and down the back of his arms. The design comes to a stop at his wrist bone.  
“This was the second one I got.”  
“What was the first?” Castiel turns around and points to right about his hip bone and I touch the marking without any pause. It’s a cluster of words in a foreign language I don’t understand. “And it says?”  
“The rough translation is to be hidden from the eyes of angels.” He grabs my hand that’s outlining the letters and I look up at him, “That tickles.” I blush and pull my hand away. “I also have this.” He turns his head to the side and I see a white cross behind his ear, “It was for my brother Balthazar.” I get at what he’s saying and I don’t push it, but I would like to hear that story. He shakes his head and smiles at me, “Do you have any ink?”  
“Yeah, but it would require getting out of this dress and I don’t feel like it.”  
“I could take my pants off if that would help.” Cas grins wickedly and it feels like someone sent a shot of adrenalin through my whole body.  
I take off my jacket and grin at him, “Yeah I think that might help.” Castiel freezes when I start to unzip the back of my dress and I can practically hear the gears in his mind stopping.  
“What?” his voice cracks and I reach up to cup his face gently.  
“You’re cute.” I lean up into him and softly press my lips to his, giving him time to retreat if he wants to. He doesn’t, I feel him start to kiss back.  
His hand comes up to grip the back up my neck and I’m locking my arms around his shoulders, my dress falls off onto the floor. Cas breaks the kiss to look down at me, clad in my combat boots and my mismatching underwear. His fingers trail lines down the side of my waist and I bite my lip. He’s tracing the outline of my brother’s name. It was my first one, I’ve had it since I was eighteen and I made the artist use the old scrap of paper I had since I was little. It was his name in my jerky little kid writing. The Tattoo looks like it’s carved into my skin. “Who’s Sammy?”  
“My little brother. He died when I was four, along with my mother.” Cas pulls me back and kisses me harder.  
His hands are lifting me up and I wrap my legs around his waist and we’re moving backward towards the bed. My back hits softly, but I don’t get the chance to bounce because Cas is on me and I feel heat all over my body again. “Is that all? For a second I think he’s referring to the making out we’re doing but then I realize he’s still talking about my tattoos and I nearly laugh. Instead I roll over to my back and move my hair out of the way.  
On my back there’s a devil’s trap right behind my heart. “It’s meant to keep demons out. To keep me safe from harm.”  
I feel Cas lean down and kiss the black design. “It’s pretty.” I roll back over and wind my arms around his shoulders, making him drop completely down. Are bodies are laying flush together and it’s doing all kinds of things to my concentration. “But not as pretty as you.”  
I laugh and he leans down to kiss me, “It’s true.” He says into our kiss, and it comes out muddled and after that we don’t talk. 

Cas falls asleep after, and I’m tempted to curl up beside him, but then I think of Charlie and how Anna treated her and I could never break our friendship over a guy. And who’s to say he won’t do me the same way? I want to stay, because he was so nice, and handsome, and better than I even deserve. That thought propels me out of the bed and I throw on my stupid dress one more time and I find my phone under the bed and I grip his bedroom doorknob so tight that my knuckles turn white.  
Technically it’s not a one night stand. We did it in the day and he knows my name and how to contact my best friend so if he ever…  
I push the door open and sigh when it doesn’t creak. There’s just so much I could take today and having him give me some sort of puppy dog eyes would send me over the edge. My stomach clenches when I step into his hallway. I look at him one last time, his hair all over the place, mouth slightly open and I bet if I listened he’d be snoring. I don’t know why I even find that cute but damn it I do. Then I’m gone from his apartment and hopefully he’s gone from my mind.  
I call Jo later, and ask her where the hell she was last night and why she ditched me. It was her standard answer for this, “I’m sorry babe, but I knew you could handle yourself.” I love Jo, don’t get me wrong, but she’s a pain sometimes. She actually reminds me of me. I turn onto the street that my apartment complex is on and I almost cry in relief, I can almost get these damn heels off.  
I call Charlie next, and that call was a lot more intense. “Was Castiel nice to you?”  
“A real gentleman.” I bet she could hear my eye roll.  
“Did you…did you sleep together last night?” she sounds unsure and I’m instantly worried.  
“No.” not really a lie, “Why? Is there something wrong with him?”  
“He’s completely harmless Deana.” Now I could practically hear her smirking at me, “I just wanted to know if you liked him. I’ve always thought that maybe, if you ever wanted someone-”  
My decent mood instantly turns sour and I cut her off, “How many times have I told you Charlie? I don’t need anyone. I’m fine. And don’t call me that.” I open the main door and nod to someone familiar looking and start up the stairs.  
“You don’t sound fine.”  
“Well I am.” I reach the fourth floor and head towards my own door.  
“…”  
“…”  
“Sorry.” We both say at the same time.  
Charlie talks before I can get the chance, “Do you want to meet up later? Have some cheap fast food somewhere?”  
I unlock my apartment door and shoulder it open. “I have to work tonight ‘til close. So unless you want to hang out past midnight then sure.” I don’t have to work that late but Bobby might actually let me work on my own car after we close shop.  
“No I have to work in the morning.”  
“Alright, well I have to get ready. I just got home. Bye.”  
“Bye.”  
I throw my shoes on the floor and flop onto my bed, which is in the living room/kitchen/dining room. But thankfully I have a separate bathroom. My phone tells me it’s almost two and I have to be at work in half an hour.  
After I shower and get dressed in normal clothes I grab my keys and jacket and head back down stairs. Bobby hates when I’m late. Whenever I am he makes me take calls instead of actually working on the cars.  
“You’re late.” Bobby yells as I get out of my car and grab the list of cars that need to be serviced today.  
“It’s Saturday, I forgot Bobby. Give me a break.” I start to walk to the back and he stops me with a hand on my shoulder.  
“Benny’s already beat you to it. He’s back there working hard.” I turn around and kick at some rocks. “I’ll tell you what,” I turned back towards the old drunk and he was frowning at me, which meant he was in a good mood, “If you want, you can stay after and use the shop to work on your car.”  
I felt the strong urge to hug him. Good thing I kept myself in check. Instead I smiled at him and he waved me off. Around five the place was slow and Benny had finished all the work he could do for today so he came up to the front to talk with me, “So how was your Friday night?” his accent was a think Louisianan accent. I always thought of his speech like syrup running down the bottle on a hot summer’s day. It was slow and sweet and he was incredibly nice. Like an older brother.  
“It was crazy; I went out with Charlie and Jo and didn’t get back home until two this afternoon.”  
“Who’d you sleep over with sister?” he grins at me and I rolled my eyes at him.  
“None of your business, you know I don’t date.”  
“Not every fish you catch is the one you’re going to eat for dinner.” He smiles at me like he’s giving me lifelong advise but I have no idea what he just said so I smile and nod like I understood. “Anyways, for as long as I’ve know you, what is it three years? You haven’t gone out with a single person and I know that there have been some offers made. Why not just try it?”  
“I don’t have time for a relationship.” It was my standard reply to anyone that asked me this. Hell, it’d been my standard reply since high school. I never knew anyone close to me that had a long relationship. I guess you could blame it on bad timing.  
“I know for a fact that you spend way too much time taking care of that car out there. Hell, if you spent half that time with someone it’d be a committed relationship. Complete with meeting the parents.”  
I laugh and he just throws his hands up in the air. “Fine, whatever sister, I’m just trying to look out for you.” He clocks out and I prop my feet up on the desk, waiting until six o’clock so I can do a tune up on the impala.  
Bobby comes by later, telling me he’s going home. I tell him bye and am about to lock up the place when I hear the bell over the door jingle, “Hello?”  
“Be right there.” I call from the back and hurry my way to the front, “We’re almost closed so if you-” I stop short when I see who it is standing just inside the building. “Are you following me?”  
Castiel jumps up when I speak and as soon as he sees me his eyes go wide. He looks like a deer in headlights. “Dean?”  
“Is there something you need? Or are you just stalking me?”  
“My car…” he points behind him and I sigh. “Something smells terrible.”  
“Are you sure you just didn’t hit an animal?”  
“Yeah.”  
Obviously I’m going nowhere with him so I walk outside, making sure to flip on the extra lights and I almost laugh at his car. “Are you a pimp?” and then I sober up because…what if he is and I slept with him and ran out? Isn’t that against their code or something?”  
Castiel finally gets over his shock at seeing me and walks up beside me, “No, I’m not, and I love this car so don’t be mean.” The wind blows and I get a strong whiff of whatever is wrong with his car and I can tell it’s not good. “So is there a mechanic I can talk to?”  
“You’re talking to her.” I walk over to the car and pop the hood, “Oh God, what did you do to this engine?”  
Castiel comes to stand behind me and I slam the hood back down. “Yeah, you’re going to have to wait a while for her to be fixed and we’re closed already.” I make a movement that seems like an invitation for him to leave but he doesn’t. “Uh, well I have to be going now.”  
I’m supposed to be working on my car tonight but with him here, with him magically finding me again, I don’t think I could focus on anything. “Do you- is there a place where I can catch a cab?” he sounds as uncomfortable as I feel and I groan.  
“No not for a few miles. It’s a Saturday night so most of them are going to be by the bars.”  
“Oh.” He looks at the road and I can see the gears turning in his mind.  
“I could drive you.”  
“You don’t have to.” He answers too quickly and it hurts. Sure I must have hurt him when he woke up and I wasn’t there but… “I don’t want to be a bother.”  
“It’s fine. Besides I can imagine how long of a walk that might be.”  
It’s not until we’re actually in my car that I notice how hungry I am. I hadn’t eaten all day and it’s nearly seven. My stomach growls. I look over at Cas and he’s giving me an odd look and I blush. It’s weird how much this guy can affect me. “Hungry?” he asks.  
“Well I had to rush to work earlier and I didn’t get the chance.” Out of the corner of my eye Cas brightens and I have to go back over what I just said that could make him happy and I come back with a blank.  
Cas buckles his seatbelt and I reverse out of the lot. “If you like good food there’s this little diner down by Rosemary Street.” I can hear the smile in Cas’s voice but that doesn’t stop me from gripping the wheel any tighter. Mary, I have no idea why after twenty years it still hurts to hear that name. My mind goes fuzzy for a few seconds and it’s long enough that Cas backtracks over his words, “But it’s fine it you’re not that hungry, or if you have plans.”  
“I have some food at home.” By that I meant I had some noodles and maybe a stick of butter.  
“Well then take a right at the next intersection.” He points at the light. “Dean-“  
“No.” I shut him up before I have to hear him say anything I’m not ready for. And that could be anything under the sun.  
I see him turn towards me out of the corner of my eye, “You don’t even know what I was going to say.”  
“Exactly. Is this it?” I stop outside an apartment complex that I’m sure is his and he nods, “Alright.”  
“Can I see you again?” he doesn’t make a move to open the door so I pull off to the side of the road and kill the engine.  
My heart starts to race and I feel my body start to heat up and I try to hide the fact that my hands are sweating. “No.” God no, I don’t want another relationship.  
“Why?”  
“Because I said so!” I bring my hands down on the wheel and he jumps.  
But he doesn’t leave, instead he just reaches out and touches my shoulder, I jump against his touch but he doesn’t pull away. “What’s wrong Dean?”  
“I don’t date.”  
“So you’re going to be alone for the rest of your life?” he asks me like I yelled at him, like he’s angry.  
He doesn’t get the fucking right to be angry, “It’s my fucking life I can do whatever I want with it.”  
“I’m going to see you again tomorrow.” He states, like he knows that I won’t object, like it’s not stalkery at all.  
“It’s Sunday tomorrow. I won’t be at work.”  
“I’ll see you tomorrow.” He smiles and I close my eyes, hoping he’ll get the point and leave. Sure enough I hear the passenger door open and then he’s gone. Out of my life.  
I feel a great weight lift off my head and settle back down on my chest.

“He said what to you?” Jo was leaning on my kitchen counter as I fumbled in my sad fridge for some kind of comfort food.  
I came back empty and even more upset, “He’ll see me tomorrow. Creepy right?”  
“Extremely creepy’ or extremely romantic.”  
“It’s weird how those two can be mixed up so many times.” I slam the fridge closed and slump against its door. “Probably for the longest time guys thought it was romantic to follow a girl home and throw rocks at her window.”  
Jo laughs at me and we sit down on my couch, I give her the remote and close my eyes, “Was he cute?”  
“So damn hot Jo, he had tattoos.”  
I can feel her move in her seat to look at me, “Did you show him yours?” I can’t stop the small smile that sneaks its way past my lips but I hear Jo laugh and hit my arm, “You dog.” We sit in silence for a while, mostly just watching the changing channels fly by. The Jo seems to settle on something and she looks over to me, “But it’s still weird, considering you’ve basically been solo for the past three years.”  
“I’ve had sex in those three years Jo.” I’m frowning now, because maybe it has been a while since I got laid. Not three years, but closet to maybe six months. “And with work and my car…” Jo rolls her eyes but doesn’t say anything else. I move my legs to the side and nudge her feet. “What?” I know she’s holding something back and I want to hear what she has to say.  
“You never really talk about why you don’t date and now what seems like a good guy is here and you don’t seem to want to give him a chance.”  
“Yeah because every guy that is interested in me I should swoon for.” Again she rolls her eyes and looks back at the TV, “I just don’t think that I’m the kind of person that can have a good relationship. In the past…I haven’t made good decisions. I did things without thinking about the consequences and I may have been to jail.” Jo’s eyes go wide and I laugh, “Not my fault and no I’m not telling you about it. I’m just saying I can’t make good decisions ever so why try and find someone I’m going to spend the rest of my life with?” My stomach rumbles and I put a pillow over my lap to quiet it. The clock on my wall becomes loud for no reason and when I look back at Jo I know why. She’s muted the TV. “No click flick moments.” I warn.  
But Jo, to my complete shock, doesn’t try to talk to me about my issues. Instead she just stares at me and a grin slowly starts to creep up her face, “What did you do to get in jail?”  
“Seriously?” I asked, “That’s all you got from that?”  
Jo moves some of the hair out of her face and smiles at me, it’s starting to get creepy. “You have relationship issues. I get that. But I’m also not a therapist so anything I say is probably worth nothing. Now tell me why you were in jail.”

Sunday morning I wake up to the sound of my phone buzzing and I hold back the urge to throw it against a wall. The clock on the wall says it’s a little after nine and I want to burn the world. Instead I roll over and grab my phone, unplugging it from the wall in the process. There’s a text message from Charlie and I debate ignoring it and going back to sleep but the last time I did that she came over with Anna and they screamed in my ears. I’m never going through that again.  
The screen is too bright and I have to squint to just look at it, “Call me at 5:01 exactly.” That was it. I text her back a quick “ok” and groan into my pillow.  
There’s no chance of sleep now so I throw off my sheets and stumble into the kitchen. Coffee seems like a good idea, but the idea of waiting for it makes me debate making any. After a few minutes of just standing in the kitchen I put a pot on and go to take a shower while I wait.  
It’s noon when I finally leave my apartment and decide to wander around downtown. My stomach rumbles and I realize I should eat, because I haven’t in a while. However when I reach in my pocket for my wallet I come back empty handed; I almost throw a bitch fit right there on the sidewalk. Someone passes by me and I wipe the angry glare from my face and just stand there thinking about how Charlie was right. I guess sometimes carrying a purse like a normal girl would come in handy.  
That doesn’t mean it’s actually going to happen, it’s just the lack of food getting to my brain. I take my cell phone out of my pocket and scroll down until I see Charlie’s name on the screen. I press the call button and turn down a street that I think will lead me to her cooperate office. She answers on the second ring, “It’s not 5:01.”  
“Hello to you too Charlie.”  
“Hello princess.” Her voice sounds distant, like she’s not really listening to the conversation.  
I switch my phone to my other hand, “Are you busy?”  
“Kind of-hacking into-something.” Her voice is clipped and I stop walking and stare at nothing in particular. I can practically see her, with two key boards and two computer screens sitting in front of her just lost in codes. “Did you need anything?”  
I shh my stomach and smile, “It can wait.”  
“Alright, remember 5:01 exactly.” She hangs up and I start to walk again, with no real purpose other than just being outside. I consider walking back to my building and grabbing my wallet, but I’m sure if I get back to my apartment then I’ll just stay inside all day playing some violent video game. But without any money I’ll have no reason to be outside. Home it is. It takes me almost 45 minutes to walk back to my building and I don’t even remember where I was planning on going.

I spend the rest of the afternoon killing everything in my line of sight. Jo left her copy of hunter over here and I’m beating every high school she set and I can almost hear myself yelling at the people in the background to back me up and I don’t know what’s worse. The fact that I’m so into the game that I don’t hear the knocking at the door, or that when I do realize that someone’s knocking I momentarily forget where I am.  
I look at the clock and see that it’s almost five so I pause the game and wait for 5:01 exactly to call Charlie. She answers with a sign, “Oh high pastor Jim.” She chimes and I try to hold in a laugh, she covers the phone to say something to someone in the background and I snort. She comes back to the phone and talks as if I were her pastor, “Yes I can do that.” I start singing to her, and the only song that I could think of right now that could possibly make her laugh is the edited version of Legolos’s ‘They’re Taking the Hobbits to Isengard.’ “I’ll be there right away.” She doesn’t so much as giggle.  
I rake the hair out of my face and shove the phone back into my pocket. The knocking starts again and I growl at it before opening the door. Only to close it after seeing who it is.  
Then I open it again.  
And close it.  
This time I keep it open. And I wish that maybe the guns from the game could somehow appear in my hands.  
“What the fuck.” It’s Cas that says it, not me, but I feel like he took the words right out of my mouth. “I just-Garth says keep it down.”  
He turns to leave and I have no idea what to say and somehow I just blurt out whatever comes out, word vomit, “Who the hell is Garth?”  
A small mouse of a man peeks his head out of the door next to mine and sort of smiles, “That’ll be me ma’am.”  
“Don’t ma’am me.” Garth comes out of his apartment completely now and stands next to Cas. He glances between us and raises his eyebrows.  
“Is it just me, or is there some kind of tension here?”  
Cas’s ears turn red and I glare at Garth, “Probably just you.” He doesn’t catch my tone and instead he smiles at me and reaches out his hand.  
“Nice to meet you.” I grab his hand and shake back. I don’t look at Cas, who seems to have gone mute, “When did you move in? Was it recent?”  
“Nah, I think I was here before you.” He smiles and adjusts the old baseball cap he’s wearing.  
Oh. “Well don’t take it personally; I don’t really talk to anyone. I’m kind of a bitch.” I smile and Garth laughs, but when Castiel snorts I turn to him, eyes wide. He looks just as surprised as Garth and I do.  
“What the hell man?” Garth doesn’t even know me, yet he looks completely offended.  
“Sorry.” Cas looks at his feet and shrugs his shoulders, “I’m probably the bitch.” He looks up at me and smiles and Garth laughs. I don’t smile back.  
“You are.”  
This time Garth must notice my tone and he glances back towards his open door, “I think I hear my phone ringing.” I don’t hear anything, “It was nice to finally meet my neighbor.” He turns to Cas and puts his hand on one of Cas’s shoulders. It looks ridiculous, “I think it’s going to be a personal call. Why don’t you hang back here for a few minutes?”  
Before Cas or I can say anything else Garth is gone and his door is slammed shut. I look at Cas, his hands shoved in his pockets. He looks lost and for a moment I’m about to ask him inside, then my actual thoughts kick in. “Well, it wasn’t nice to see you.”  
There’s a foot keeping my door open, “I’m not stalking you.”  
I open the door back up, “Yeah, I know. Considering how that guy knows you.”  
“Dean?”  
“What?” I growl.  
He looks like he’s debating something in his head and I’m about to shove him away from my door when he finally speaks up, “Why did you leave yesterday?”  
I push down my blush, but I can feel my stomach summersault and I plaster on a fake grin. “Well normally when a place of business is closed you leave it.”  
“Not what I meant.”  
“I know.” He doesn’t say anything, and I can feel him standing over me. It’s not menacing, but it’s starting to get creepy with all the staring.


	2. Broken beyond compare

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stop thinking about that Winchester. 'You’re broken'. The words come out of nowhere and I seize up. 'Poison'. Suddenly the sheets beneath me aren’t cold anymore and I’m burning up. 'Nothing’s in that pretty little head of yours is there?' I grab at the comforter and twist it in my hands until I feel the cold air of the room creep up from my feet. 'Mary died, Sammy died, how did I get stuck with you?'

The next day I make sure to get to work on time, the only bad thing is that I have to work on his car. Benny doesn’t say anything other than hello and Bobby, as always, doesn’t speak unless he thinks I’m doing something wrong.   
That old bastard.  
Cas’s car just needs to be sold for scrap, but by the end of the day I’m able to work out most of the kinks and when she starts up everything sounds normal. But Benny tells me to keep it for another day so I can run some more tests. He wants to make sure the customer is happy, but I couldn’t give two fucks.  
While Benny and I are closing up Bobby calls me over to him, “You have plans for dinner?”  
I think back the empty fridge, “You trying to ask me on a date old man?” he glares at me and I smile back.  
“I was going to ask if you wanted to come to my house and be civil but never mind you idjit.”  
“I’d love to.”  
“You’re not invited anymore.” He looks over my shoulder and yells at Benny, “You want to have dinner over at my house Benny?”  
“Anytime sweetheart.”  
Bobby serves us Sloppy Joes and he starts rambling about some new book he’s read. I tune out about the third time he slips into another language.

I can hear Cas’s laugh as I walk past Garth’s door and it make me angry. I knock on it, loudly.  
Garth comes to answer and he looks surprised. “Was I too loud?” I shake my head and smile at him; actually I thought I heard Castiel. You wouldn’t mind getting him would you?”  
He doesn’t move so I smile bigger, “It’s about his car.”  
“Cas man!” Garth yells over his shoulder and he walks away, “It was nice seeing you again neighbor.”  
When Cas comes to the door he doesn’t look surprised but he doesn’t look happy. He just looks cautious.  
As well he should be.  
“Is there something I can do for you Dean?”  
His hair is in an even wilder mess than before and I want to just take my hands and smooth it down, “You car will be ready tomorrow.”  
This time he does smile, “That’s good, Garth is getting tired of driving me around and my friend Balthazar won’t do it.”  
One of his socks is coming off oh his foot, and his jeans look like he’s slept in them. “Have you not been home?” I don’t know why I ask it, but I do and he doesn’t look put off.  
Cas shrugs, “I live too far away from my job and I don’t want to make someone drive me around all the time. I don’t want to be a bother to someone.”  
“I know the feeling.” Cas cocks his head to one side, obviously curious about what I was talking about but I just shake my head. “It doesn’t matter, it’s not important. I just wanted to tell you so you could drop by anytime after twelve and come get her.”  
I start to walk away and he follows me out into the hallway, closing Garth’s door behind him, “Listen, about Saturday-”  
“It’s fine, just a onetime thing right? I get it.” we’re at my door now.  
“No.”  
I turn to look at him and he moves some of the stray strand of hair out of my eyes, “I think you’re pretty cool Dean. And even if you don’t like me I’d like to be friends.”  
“I don’t date.” There goes my standard reply and for once I wonder what could be so wrong if I took a chance? But then I remember my dad and all the screaming and fighting he did with his girlfriends.  
I don’t want that.  
“Why not, and I’m not pushing, I’m just curious.” I invite him inside since it feels like he’s going to keep talking to me for a while.   
I close the door behind us and walk to my kitchen area and sling my jacket across the back of a chair. My shirt is dirty and so are my pants but there’s no way I’m going to change in front of him and my bathroom is too small. I’m not going to be uncomfortable in my own home. I turn to Cas and find him staring at the couch that doubles as a bed and my infinite collection of video games and movies. “Quite a place you got here.”  
I can’t tell if he’s being rude or not so I just ignore him and start to dig through my laundry and when I come up with a new pair of jeans and a shirt I ask him to turn around and he does without complaint. “Alright you can turn around.” I sit down on my couch and he joins me. “I don’t date because I don’t believe that I could ever find that kind of love and I don’t want to fall into some old routine with someone I hate. I don’t want to be in any kind of relationship that could hurt me.”   
“Oh.”  
“Yeah.”  
“So then have you ever dated someone?” Cas looks over at me and he doesn’t seem to be looking at me like I’m insane.  
I roll my head from side to side to work out the kinks from my day at work, “I don’t think a middle school boyfriend counts. I did like someone a few years ago, but we’re friends now. He doesn’t know I liked him.”  
“Do you mind if I ask who?”  
“Yes.”  
“Ok.”  
“Ok.”  
There he was again, with those intensely blue eyes. “I like you Dean.”  
“If I didn’t have those rules then I’d say I like you back.”  
Castiel laughs but he doesn’t seem that happy, “Well that’s fine, I’ll respect that. But we can be friends?” I consider this and nod my head, nothing bad will happen this way. “Cool.” He pulls out his phone from his jacket pocket and sends a quick message, “Alright let’s get started.”  
“Get started with what?” he gets up and kicks off his shoes like he’s been here all his life.  
Cas bends down and starts to riffle through all the movies and games I have. Then he stands up and shows me what he’s holding in his hands. “You know, I read the book but I haven’t seen this yet.” It’s the Hobbit, the first movie.  
“Dude,” I get up and snatch it from his hands, “This is one of the best movie adaptations from a book I’ve ever seen.”

“Did you ever hang out with Castiel when you and Anna were dating?” Jo and I were sitting in my bed/couch as Charlie put the pizza she brought over into my crappy oven and slammed the door closed.  
She looked up at me, then back down to the stove, “Sometimes, why?”  
She sits down in the middle of us when she’s done in the kitchen area and Jo folds her legs up to her chest to make room, “Well we watched the Hobbit the other day and he seemed completely dumbfounded by the CGI in the movie.”  
“I love the Hobbit, did he love it? if he didn’t you can’t be fuck buddies anymore.”  
I almost choke on my own spit.  
So does Jo, “You slept with someone? And you saw them afterwards?” suddenly I want to murder my friends. Well the feelings have always been there…  
“Shut up, he wouldn’t leave me alone, practically stalked me. So I told him no. I think he’s the only guy that gets no means no.” I dig my remote from underneath my ass and turn on the Tv. “What do y’all want to watch tonight?”  
“I don’t care.” They say the same time.  
“I want to hear how he managed to get in your home and watch a movie with you.” Charlie wiggles her eyebrows and smiles at me.  
“I want to know how you finished a movie without random breaks for making out and other things.”  
“Slut.”  
Jo holds up her hands and shrugs, “You’re just jealous that so many guys leave me their numbers at the road house.” I shrug back at her and start to flip through the channels. “But seriously, this Cas guy…could he be…someone important to you?”  
“Maybe, but not in the romantic way, you know how I feel about dating.”  
“It’s an abomination!” Charlie shouts. “Oh my God! Get the romance away from me! Shoo!” She stands up on the couch and picks up an imaginary skirt, like women use to do because they saw a mouse. I pull her down and she falls on me, “Dean, you are going to fall in love one day without you knowing it. And I’m going to laugh.”  
“Same bro.” Jo gets up and stretches her arms over her head, “You have any beer?”  
“No, I get paid Thursday.”  
“We could go out for drinks.” Charlie stands up to go check on the pizza.  
I roll my eyes at them, “As fun as that sounds, the last time we did that I woke up in some random guys house.”  
“And now you’re friends.”  
“You’re not helping me here Jo.”  
She picks up a piece of my clothing and sniffs it. “That’s the point, and besides if we go to the right bars the drinks could be free.” She throws the pants she’s holding at me and a nice shirt hits me in the face, “But we’re going to eat first.”  
“My motto.” Charlie calls from the kitchen. I look down at the clothes in my hands and decide that I might as well get plastered tonight, I have Wednesday’s off, so I wouldn’t have to work with a hangover in the morning.

After we eat Jo changes into one of my shirts, “Which bar ladies?”  
“Anyone that will let me get torn down drunk.” My phone is in it’s stupid wallet case again, so I don’t have to carry two separate things and as I lock the door behind me I see Garth just getting to his door. “Hey.”  
“Hey, how are you ladies doing?” he leans against his door frame and smiles at us, but I see him flash a glance at Charlie, I’ll have to tell him he’ll get nowhere with her.  
I gesture to my two friends and they wave back to him, “I’m being forced to leave my home tonight.”  
“Bummer.”  
“The good news is I’m going to get drunk, so if you hear anyone trying to break into my apartment tonight don’t worry it’s just me.” Garth laughs and as we reach the first floor Charlie and Jo both look at me, “That’s my neighbor Garth. Apparently him and Cas are really good friends.”  
“So is that how he got access into your house?” Charlie bumps me and I shove her lightly/  
“Yeah.”  
We go to a bar on the far side of town and I pay for us to get in. The bouncer accepts payment of a sly smile and my eyes fluttering. Dumb bastard.

“It’s kind of dead tonight.” Jo is leaning up against the bar, her fourth shot is empty and she doesn’t even look phased.  
I look down at the six empty shot glasses on the bar beside me and I wave my hand at the bar tender and he comes my way, “It’s a Tuesday night, nothing interesting ever happens on a Tuesday night.” I pick up the new shot and stare at the clear liquid.   
“Where even did Charlie go?” when we first got here she was sitting at the bar with us, but somewhere between the twenty minutes we’ve been here she’s disappeared. How surprising, I shrug my shoulders at Jo.  
There’s someone sitting on the other side of me now, I could feel the air change. I turned around slowly and smiled at the man sitting next to me. He had short black hair and carmel skin, “Mind if I buy you a drink miss?” I wanted to laugh at him calling me ‘miss’, but I just smiled wider and nodded my head. “What are you drinking?”  
“Whisky.”  
“I’m Dean.”  
“That’s an odd name for a girl, two whiskey’s please.” He added the last part to the bar tender as he walked past.  
I hold down the stupid come back to that, “It’s short for Deana.”  
“Pretty.” His eyes rake over my chest, “You’re very pretty.”  
I turn back to where Jo was only a few seconds ago and she’s no longer there, I spot her over in the corner with some other patron of this bar. “Thank you.” I say, turning back to the guy sitting beside me, but I no longer feel like flirting, or getting drunk in a bar with strangers. I just want to get drunk alone and then sleep like the dead. I down my whiskey, and see the surprised look from the man next to me. “I’m sorry but I have to go.”  
He grabs my arm as I turn to leave and I jerk out of his grip, “I thought we could have a good time?”  
“Afraid not.” There are a few more protests as I walk away but I ignore him. I know there’s a liquid store down the street and I stop in to get a few bottles of cheep vodka, the good kind.  
I don’t have money for a cab so I decide to walk all the way across town. Luckily there’s no one else out and about tonight, because I don’t think I’d have the energy to put up with them tonight. About twenty minutes later I look up and see Cas’s building a few blocks over. My feet hurt and I just want to lay down so I decide it’s worth the obnoxious questions he’s sure to have and I turn down a side street in the direction of his apartment.  
There’s no buzz in system, or at least it’s broken and the security guard doesn’t look twice at me as I carry my brown bag into the elevator and guess at which floor was his. The first door I knock on isn’t his, it belongs to a very angry Mexican woman who points furiously two doors down.  
Cas takes a minute to answer my knock and in that minute I panic and second guess myself. It was stupid to come here, he’s going to assume that I’ve changed my mind about relationships. Or worse, he won’t want me over here…or even worse…someone else will be over.  
I don’t know why I consider this to be the worst case scenario but I do and it’s all I can think about before the door is flung open before me and there he is. Alone, and bare skinned, at least his stomach is bare, he’s wearing plaid pajama’s and mixed matched socks. It is kind of adorable. “Dean?” he rubs his eyes and looks at me with a mix of sleep and happiness, “What are you doing here?”  
“Were you asleep? What time is it?” my phone is in the bottom of the bag and I haven’t checked the time in a long time, what if it’s super late and I’m incredibly rude. “It’s only nine and no I was just resting my eyes during a commercial. What’s in the bag?” he steps back and invites me in.  
“Booze.”  
He raises an eyebrow at me and I shrug and kick my shoes off. “Why?”   
We go into the living room and there’s some old, black and white movie paused. “Well, Charlie and Jo dragged me to a bar and I wasn’t having fun.” He still looks slightly confused by me being here so I continue to explain, “I wasn’t going to ruin their fun and I still wanted to get shitfaced.”  
“Ok, I’ll get glasses.” I sit down on the couch and take a bottle out of the bag and I also grab my phone and send a quick text to the girls to let them know that I haven’t been abducted. While Cas is gone I notice just how nice his things are. His living room is about the size of my whole apartment. I wonder what he does for a living. “So do you want to just drink or have some sort of drinking game?”  
I jump at the sound of his voice and he laughs, “I don’t care dude, whatever is the most fun.”  
“Come with me for a second.” He walks back towards what I assume is the kitchen and I follow him. Once there I stand beside him and grab a lot more shot glasses.  
“So what are we doing?”  
“Have you ever played ‘never have I ever’ in high school?” I shake my head and he looks shocked, but he just shuts the cabinet door and we walk back to the living room and he sits down on the ground in front of his coffee table. I sit in the opposite side of him. “Well here’s the rundown of the game.” He sets up ten shots in front of me and ten in front of him, “One person says, ‘never have I ever…’ something and if the other person has done it then they take a drink.”  
“You played this in high school?” I look down at the shots in front of me and back up to him and he shakes his head. “Nah, we would hold up ten fingers and the last person standing had to do something really stupid.”  
“Something stupid? Is the last person standing today going to do something stupid?” He laughs and I squint my eyes at him, “What?”  
“We’re drinking on a week night, we’re already doing something stupid, that and we’re drinking. Alcohol induced minds always think of the stupidest things.” He looks at me and I suddenly get the feeling that I’m going to blush like a freaking preteen if he doesn’t look away from me soon. “I guess I’ll start. Never have I ever gotten into a fist fight.”  
“You sound like a boring person.” Cas frowns and I take a shot.  
“Why were you in a fist fight?”  
I shrug, like I always do, “These people in my high school were saying things about my family. I lost my temper.”  
“Were you ok?” he looks concerned and I grin.  
“I put two guys in the nurses office and one had to get stitches.” He looks like he wants to ask me more questions so I take my turn, “Never have I ever liked pop music.”  
He slams down a shot and grimaces at the taste. “That was lame and you know it.” I shrug, “Never have I ever been in love.”  
I hesitate for a second, my hand comes up part of the way and I just sit there. This shot doesn’t taste so bad, after my drinks at the bar and these right now; my mind starts to get a little bit fuzzy. “Can we just take shots now?”  
“Alright, this is kind of lame.” I stand up, and toss my jacket on the back of the couch and sit down next to him so I can see the TV. I try to ignore the tight muscles on his arms and his amazing tattoo. “What do you want to watch?”  
“I don’t care.”  
“Cool.”  
He flips the screen to some show I don’t recognize, but I’m not paying attention. After a while he leans over and very quietly asks if I’m ok. I don’t know what to say to I just go with my standard reply, “I’m fine.” Just once I’d like someone to see through the lie that it is.  
He leans back over and takes another drink from the bottle, I don’t know when we gave up on trying to pour shots, but soon enough we’ve almost finished both bottles.  
That’s when I start getting tired and my head falls down onto Cas’s should, “Do you want to sleep over here tonight?”  
“I don’t have money for a cab.”  
“You can sleep in my bed, I’ll grab the couch.”  
“You can sleep in your bed.” I feel him tense up beside me and I stop him before he can object, “There’s room enough for both of us, and I think I could sleep so deeply enough tonight that I won’t move around.”  
“Ok.” Some of the tension leaves his body and I relax into him. I want to ask if I can wear some of his clothes so I’m not stuck in a tight shirt and an uncomfortable bra. “Do you want to wear one of my shirts?”  
“Yes.”  
“Ok.”  
He gets up then and turns off the TV, my legs feel a little bit wobbly. The way back to his room seems different that it did the last time I was here, and not because I don’t plan on sleeping with him. It just feels quicker. Like the dark has somehow shrunk the apartment. When we get to his room he digs in his dresser and tosses an old shirt at me. I go to the bathroom and change without turning on the light. I don’t want to risk getting a head ache. I keep the door ajar, so that there’s some light. As I turn around to leave the room I see Cas looking directly at the far wall and there’s a blush to his cheeks.  
But that could just be the booze.  
The last thing I remember is the comforter being pulled up around me and the bed sinking down beside me.

It was cold, no, the sheets beneath me were cold. I woke up on that same mattress from almost a week ago and a sense of déjà vu washed over me. But this time when I rolled over there he was, still asleep beside me. I bet his hair would be even worse than normal. It would be cute.  
I shake my head and close my eyes.  
Stop thinking about that Winchester. You’re broken. The words come out of nowhere and I seize up. Poison. Suddenly the sheets beneath me aren’t cold anymore and I’m burning up. Nothing’s in that pretty little head of yours is there? I grab at the comforter and twist it in my hands until I feel the cold air of the room creep up from my feet. Mary died, Sammy died, how did I get stuck with you?  
I can feel my heart beat in my chest, can’t Cas hear that? But he doesn’t move. I want to move, to get out of here. I sit up too quickly and instantly regret it. All the alcohol rushes up and I run to the bathroom and barely make it in time before I’m puking up pizza and bile.  
Gross.  
I walk back in his bed room and crawl under the covers and burry my face in the pillow I’m using.  
I wake up later, much later. With my face pressed into Cas’s shoulder and my legs wrapped around his. I want to move, but I’m too comfortable to leave and Cas’s arm is draped around my waist. I nudge my head and Cas looks down at me, “What time is it?”  
“How am I supposed to know?”  
He moves his arm away from me and I pull my legs away from his, “Do you want breakfast.”  
The thought of food makes my stomach churn, but also the thought of free food makes me happy so I nod my head. “Good.” he sits up and winches at the movement. “I think I can make us something greasy and fattening.”  
He gets up and stretches like a cat. I was right, his hair is even worse than normal. Cas looks like he got struck by lightning.  
I get up next and pull on my pants that mysteriously disappeared in the middle of the night. I don’t take off Cas’s shirt, instead I put my bra on and leave his shirt to hang off me. My hair’s a mess so I just throw it up in a wild bun and head out to the kitchen. It smells like bacon and despite my heaving from earlier, my stomach rumbles. “I think I could eat an entire city.”  
“I think I’m fresh out of that, but I do have bacon and eggs cooked in bacon grease.” Cas turns to me with a spatula in hand and motions me to sit down at his small table.   
I sit down on the far side so I can see him work, “I guess that’ll have to do.”  
He laughs and spins around when toast pops up from the other side of the kitchen. Watching him be so happy makes me smile. He’s such a dork. After he’s done cooking I start to stand when he waves his hand at me and carries over two plates full of food and sits one down in front of me. I’ve never had someone be this nice to me. It’s odd. Cas doesn’t sit down he sets our stuff down, instead he walks back over to the cabinet and pulls out two glasses, “What would you like to drink?”  
“Got any coffee?”  
“I could make some.”  
“Juice?”  
“Apple fine?”  
“Yeah.”  
“Ok.” He comes back over to me and sits down on the opposite side. So we’re staring at each other, this guy seems to love staring. I dig into my plate. Well I practically inhale it. He eats slower than I do so I slow myself down. “I had fun last night, I haven’t drank in a while.”  
“I drink all the time.”  
He cocks his head to one side and stares at me, “Why?”  
“It’s not like I’m an alcoholic, well no one has ever said I was, but I don’t know…my dad drinks a lot, so I kind of just picked up the habit.” I look down at my plate and keep eating to avoid looking at him, I don’t like this topic.  
“Alright.” I look up at him, surprised. I was expecting more questions. I always got more questions, “I won’t pry.”  
And suddenly I want to explain myself to him, I want him to see that I’m not just a poor drunk, “My dad drank because he was sad all the time and he thought it could help take away the pain. It didn’t.” I twist a stray piece of my hair behind my ear and mess with the remains of my breakfast, “I started drinking when I was in high school. Everyone knew my story, they knew it was just me and my father, and sometimes…the other girls would say I was a dyke because I liked working on cars and I didn’t have a mother to show me how to be a girl. The boys never paid me any attention.  
“Drinking doesn’t make the pain go away, it just dulls the senses that make you care about the pain. Sometimes it even gives you solutions, but even with the manipulated mind of a drunken person I would never hurt myself on purpose. So I moved school to where people didn’t know me or my story and I was happy. I dated a football player name Michael. He was great. Everything was great.  
“Until it wasn’t. He would get mad at me for no reason and demand that I do what he said. Most of the time I told him to fuck off and I’d leave him, but he’d always say something to bring me back to him. I hated it, I hated living like that, I was worried about who I could hang out with, I was afraid that if I went out with one of my friends he’d get mad and hit me like he would never do again.  
“I loved him, and I wanted to kill him and leave him for the buzzards to get. But when I graduated I moved to California and just kind of bummed around until I ended up in jail for beating up some sick bastard who was going to fucking kill someone. He was going to rob her. And I stopped him. So I went to jail and he went free.  
“My dad bailed me out. I haven’t seen him since and it’s been three years. The last three years I’ve been here, living as normally as I can and trying to not murder someone. Most days I wake up and hear all the horrible things people have called me in the past, freak, poison, broken, too pretty to know anything, burden. And I can’t look at myself in the mirror without seeing the things they know I am.” I look at Cas to see his reaction, but I can’t tell if he’s disgusted or not.  
I want to get up, to run, run like I’ve always done. My legs don’t get up like I command them to. “You’re not broken Dean, you’re not poison, and you’re not a freak. And I happen to know that you’re so smart. It’s hard to know what to do under a hood and you had down what was wrong with my car in under a minute. Don’t keep their voices in your head.” I snort and he gets up and pulls a chair right next to mine. When I don’t look at him he turns my chair to where I have to look at him. “Dean if you were poison do you think I would try so hard to be with you? Even if that means not actually being with you. Having you for a friend is more than enough for me.”  
“You’ve known me for less than a week Cas.”  
He stands up and sits back down, like he’s thinking about doing something, “Dean-”  
“I should probably go, you have to work today?”  
“What?” he looks around the room, “I don’t work that much, Its Wednesday right? Yeah I’m off today.”  
“I should still be going.”  
“Stay Dean, please?” I know I don’t have to, but the look in his eyes make me sit down and he sits back down in the chair beside me.  
“Cas?”  
“Hmm?”  
I twist the end of my shirt and avoid looking at him, “I know you don’t have to do this, and it would be totally fine if you didn’t want to, but-um, would you just want to lay in bed all day? I don’t really want to watch TV.”  
“Sure Dean, we can listen to music and talk, or we could just lay there. Whatever you want to do.” I stand up and he follows me back into his bedroom and I have to fight myself from kissing him when he sits his door and lays back down on his bed, “Want to hear about the time my brother Balthazar threw a party and somehow a goat ended up getting stuck on the roof?”  
I cozy up onto his chest and curl my feet up beside me.  
It’s not warm and it’s not cold. I can feel his deep voice rumble through his chest, “Sounds like my kind of party.”


	3. Home for the Holidays

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When my car rolls past the Lawrence city limit sign I tense up, I haven’t been back here in five years. I know where to go without having someone tell me where to go. I know my dad would never move out of our old house. It’s a little past two in the afternoon when I pull up in the driveway and the windows are draw shut.

A few weeks later the happiness that comes from Cas slowly drains away from my mind. Next week is May 2, and it’ll be 22 years since the fire that destroyed my family. I try to not let it affect me, I really do. But as it gets closer and closer I start to wonder where Sammy would be now, would he be in college? Or would he be in pre law? I bet he would have been great in anything he set his mind to, just like out mother.  
A wrench falls onto the concrete ground next to me and I jump out of my thoughts.  
“You’ve been staring at that gear shift all day, what’s on your mind?” Bobby wipes off the grease on his hands and sits in the car with me.  
“Next week is May 2.”   
He doesn’t say anything, instead he just nods his head and pats me on the shoulder kindly, “What day is that on?”  
“A Friday. But I can come to work, I’ll be fine.”  
“When was the last time you spoke to your old man?” he and my dad knew each other when they were younger, I think they knew each other because they were both mechanics, but I don’t know. I’m not going to ask my dad, and Bobby sure as hell won’t tell me. “Well, here’s what I suggest, you go down to Lawrence and check on him, make sure he still knows how to eat and make coherent noises.”  
He said the same thing last year, and the year before that, and I say the same thing I always say, “He doesn’t want to see me, especially not around this time of year. He gets mad at me for living and for mom dying.”  
“You know as well as I do that that was not your fault, there was no way it could be your fault. Do you understand me Deana Winchester?”  
He shakes me and I nod my head at him, “I know that Bobby, I just don’t want to go back and look at an empty grave, they’re not there. I can mourn them right here and get my money to pay for rent.”  
“You’re not working on Friday.”  
“Bobby!”  
He opens the door and stands up, “I mean it Dean, I can’t have you all messed up while you’re underneath a two ton car.”  
“I can at least do the phone.”  
He stares at me for a while, then finally he just shakes his head and nods, “No. Go to your dads, it’s been a while and you know it.”  
I start to object, but truth be told I have no idea how my only family is doing, I might as well make sure he’s ok, “Can I have the whole week off?”  
‘Sure kid.”   
When I get home there’s a sticky note on my door and I can barely make out Cas’s small handwriting, At Garth’s. If you need anything or want to see my gorgeous face, knock. I laugh and shoulder open my door. I know Cas will come by later to hang out and watch a movie, that’s what he’s been doing for the last few days.  
My bed isn’t as large as Cas’s is, but to me it’s just as comfortable. I lay down for a while, until the uncomfortable feeling of dry sweat makes me get up and I take a shower. When I get out Cas is sitting on my bed flipping through the few books I have. “What are you doing?”  
He looks up at me, still clad in just a towel, “You never came to knock and I was about to leave Garth’s.”  
“That’s great.”  
“I wanted to see if you wanted to go grab some food.” He puts down the book in his hand and I notice it one of my Vonnegut’s.  
I bend down beside my bed and grab clothes without looking, “Why would I want to do that?”  
I don’t completely close the bathroom door behind m, so I can hear him answer, “You have maybe some butter and noodles.”   
“I’ve had those essentials for weeks, they keep me going.” I come out of the bathroom and continue to dry my hair with the towel I was just using, “And eating out is a waste of money, I just have to go to the store.”  
I hate going to the store, it’s so mundane and boring that I normal just grab three things before I run screaming. I think I’d much rather fight a monster than be that much of a civilian. “Are you planning on going to the store anytime soon?”  
My irritation from earlier starts to make a guest appearance but I shove it down. Cas doesn’t deserve my anger, even if he’s acting like this. “No.” He sits up a little straighter and spreads his hands out like ‘see? I was right, let’s do what I want.’ Fucking controlling dick.  
“I’m fine! I don’t need someone to control what I do with my life!”  
Well I guess controlling my anger failed, but right now I don’t care, “Dean-”  
“No, you know I don’t like being told what to do, especially by someone I thought I could trust.” I curl my hands into fists and start to pace back and forth. Eventually my breathing becomes normal again and I turn back to Cas, “I’m sorry. I trust you, and I’m just a dick.”  
He looks like he’s about to get up so I flop down beside him. I’m tired of standing, “Are you ok Dean?”  
“I’m fine Cas.” I can see him want to reject that answer, but he doesn’t, “I’m going to Kansas next week.” I look at the clothes I have on, I somehow managed to pick up the shirt I stole from him a few weeks ago and a pair of old shorts. I must look like a homeless person, “It’s my brother’s birthday May second.” Cas doesn’t say anything, “It’s been almost three complete years since I’ve seen John, my dad, and I should probably check on him. Make sure he still knows how to open his mouth for other things than drinking.”  
“When are you leaving?”  
“Sunday, in two days. I’ll be down there for a whole week. I want to make sure he’s fine. I also have some things I should probably do in town. Most people from Lawrence don’t leave there after they graduate, I’m going to see if I can meet up with some people I knew in high school,”  
“Michael?” when I don’t answer that’s all the answer he needs, “Dean, meeting him might not be a good idea,”  
“I have to do something, when I left it was after a fight. I want to see how he’s doing now.”  
“You want to know if he’s still a douche.” All my anger builds up in me, “You can’t just meet your ex and decide if what you did was right or wrong, you should already know that.”  
“I want to know what’s wrong with me! I want to know why everyone I love either dies or is some asshole that is hell bent on hurting me at any chance they can take.”  
“Dean that’s not true.”  
I stand up now, to upset to just sit around, Cas stands with me and tries to follow me around the small apartment. “Then tell me! Tell me why my mother died, my brother died and my dad blamed me for their deaths? Tell me why everyday for the next 15 years I was subject to his constant torment? And it wasn’t just words Cas, it should be obvious how terrible of a father he was. Then next came Michael, who I’ve already told you about.”  
“Do you love your friends Charlie and Jo?” of course I do, “What about Bobby?” he’s like my father, but it’s not like I’d ever tell him that.  
“Of course I do, but it’s not what I’m talking about.”  
“Then what are you talking about?” Cas seems so curious, like he actually wants to know. Like he actually wants to help, and damn it I think he would do anything in his power to help me.  
But what was I talking about? Deep down I knew what I was thinking, “No one’s going to love me like my dad loved my mom, no one’s going to fight for me, they’re always going to fight me.” God I sounded like a bitch but I had to get it out there, I was scared of being alone. Everyone’s left me; I have a reason to not want to be alone.  
Cas looks like he wants to say something, actually he looks like he’s refraining himself from saying something, “Why do you look constipated?”  
“Nothing.” He didn’t sound like he meant it, but he also sounded like he didn’t want me to press it, so I don’t. “Food?”  
“Fine.”

When my car rolls past the Lawrence city limit sign I tense up, I haven’t been back here in five years. I know where to go without having someone tell me where to go. I know my dad would never move out of our old house. It’s a little past two in the afternoon when I pull up in the driveway and the windows are draw shut.   
As I open my door I notice a few of the neighbors peeking out of their windows but I don’t pay them any attention, I’m not here for them.  
Dad doesn’t answer, and after a few minutes I try the door. Of course he hasn’t locked it, not like he should care for his own safety. “Dad?” the sound of the TV is coming from the living room and I see him sitting down on the couch in the dark, a few beer bottles by his feet. “John? Dad, it’s me Dean?”  
“Deana?” he turns around and when he sees me it’s like he’s seeing a ghost. At least that’s how I feel. I can only guess he’s shocked at seeing me again.  
He doesn’t look as bad as I thought he would, he looks run down and tired, but he looks fine. “Yeah dad, it’s me.” I sit down on the couch beside his chair and look at the dark room around me. “I thought maybe it was time I swing by for a visit.”  
“Visit!” I cringe at his voice and find something interesting to look at on the floor, “I haven’t seen you since I bailed you out of fucking jail and you just show up three years later! Real fucking great Dean, I’m glad you decided to see how your old man was doing.”  
He doesn’t look at me, “I’m sorry dad.”  
“Are you?”  
“Yes.”  
“What did you break now Dean? Did you ruin the relationships in your life so badly that you decided to come crawling back to me?”  
I stand up, I want to hit something. Preferably him, “You know what? I came back for Sam and mom, but I can leave.” The front door slams behind me and I’m at my car before the door opens back up and dad stands there, wincing at the light.  
“Your room hasn’t been touched sine that night you left. It’s probably dusty, but you’re welcome to it.”  
I have my door open, I’m ready to leave. But I close the impala’s door, “Sure dad, but I’m staying for a week. I can’t be gone from my job for longer than that.”  
He leaves the front porch and walks over to my car, “I see you fixed up the old girl.” He runs his hands over the hood and he looks different, not drunk maybe. He looks kind of happy. “You know your mother hated this car at first, I promised her something else and came home with this. She was pissed.” He stops at the front and bends down, “You mind?” I nod my head and he pops open the hood, and whistles.

Once inside I climb the stairs to my old room, it feels like I’m in another life, a different time. There are posters on the wall from the eighties and the vintage records still stacked up on the desk. I sit on my bed and a column of dusk puffs up. I pick up my phone and look at the screen, I want to call someone from back home, but I can’t bring myself to bother Charlie or Jo. So I dial Cas’s phone number and he answers on the fourth ring, “Dean, everything ok?”  
“Yeah, fine. I was just sitting in my old room and I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know if I was supposed to look at all my old things or go down stairs and talk to him.”  
“Have you spoken to your father yet?”   
I lean back on my bed and smile at the ceiling, “Yeah I have but I really don’t want to talk about him right now. I was hoping to get my mind off of Lawrence for at least a little bit longer.” Cas laughs and I do to. “I need to actually go into town tomorrow, so there’s that to look forward to.” We talk for a while, mostly about random things, however he does get me to talk about what I’m going to do about my father. I can’t just leave him in the state that he’s in. I want to but Cas makes me promise I’ll do better than that.  
In the morning when I wake up I panic before remembering where I am, it’s still dark outside, and my phone says it’s a little past 5. So why in God’s name am I awake? There’s no noise coming from downstairs or from dads room. Everything’s quiet, there aren’t even sounds coming inside of cars driving by or people yelling at each other in the apartment over. I guess the quiet woke me up.  
There’s no chance of falling back asleep so I decide to go downstairs to surprise dad with a homemade meal, something he probably hasn’t had in a long time. Or if he cooked it must have been gross. The fridge is empty and the cabinets are as bare as mine are. I can’t afford to buy groceries for this house so I settle on picking up something quick from the gas station. I need to fill up anyways.  
There’s a kid behind the counter that looks like puberty threw up on his face. Poor kid. But besides him I’m completely alone in the mini mart/gas station. I get what I want and what I think my dad will like and as I turn back to pay for the pile of goodies in my arms there’s another person standing in line paying for his gas, “Ten gallons at pump two.” His voice sounds too familiar and I’m lucky I hold onto the things in my hands. “Thanks kid.” He turns around then, and that’s when he sees me. I don’t think he recognizes me, and I’m fine with that, but he points to everything I’m holding and asks if I need any help carrying it.  
“No.”  
I don’t know if it was my voice that made the light in his eyes spark up, or his brain just caught up, “Deana?”  
I want to pretend that I don’t know who he is, it would be easier, and well it would be more fun for me. “Yes?” I walk to the counter because the things in my hands start to slip. I set the stuff down and turn back to Michael.  
“Wow, it’s been a long time.” he leans against the shelves and looks me up and down, suddenly I want to be wearing my old sweats and the hoodie I stole from Charlie. I never liked the way he looked at me. It always felt like he was sizing up his prey before he attacked. And most of the time he did. “You look great.” I want to say something back, like ‘well you don’t’ or ‘I see you traded the six pack for the beer gut’ but those would be lies and I want to be the better one. But I don’t even get the chance to say anything before he’s talking again. I forgot he did that, “What are you doing in town?”  
“I came to see my dad and make sure Sammy was doing alright.” I don’t know why I referred to him as if he was still alive, but Michael doesn’t look weirded out, maybe it’s because I use to do that all the time. I’d talk as if I was going to get check on him to see if he was having fun, not make sure that the flowers I left on his grave were still there.  
Michael nods and he smiles at me, “So you seeing anyone, because if not-”  
“Actually I have a boyfriend.” I don’t mean to say it, I just do. Like word vomit. Michael raises his eyebrow and stares down at me.  
“Oh really?” God I hate his condescending tone. “Is he here with you?”  
I can hear the clock tick behind me and the pubescent adolescent smack his gum, “He might drive down here later this week.” I have no idea why I’m lying. It’s not like having a man will make my life better, but at least if he thinks I’m taken he might not be such a dick. “His name is Castiel.”

I sit in my car at the pump thinking about what I just did. What the fuck is wrong with me? Cas? I really had to say it was Cas? Couldn’t I have just rammed my head into the oven behind the counter? Or better yet, say that the kid barely out of diapers was my one true love? Yeah, I’m amazing.  
I jump at a knock on my window, “Honey, I haven’t seen anyone this angst ridden since the Winchesters had a falling out.” I open the door to see a short black woman standing there with her hands on her hips and a smirk on her face, “Well I guess it’s just a Winchester trait. Deana as I live and breathe, you sure did grow up.”  
“Can I help you?” I don’t want to be rude but I have no idea who she thinks she is but I have to be going home before dad wakes up and thinks I just left. Like I did all those years ago.  
She looks up at me and for a second it feels as if she’s actually looking down at me, “Dean Winchester are you telling me you don’t remember me? When I practically raised you?”  
“Missouri?”  
“Damn straight.”  
“You look different.”  
“I look old Dean.” She does, but it’s understandable, she’s how old? Sixty? Seventy? I have no idea, she’s always been old and mysterious. “Now I’m not ancient Dean, and no I’m not telling you my age. Ladies don’t do that.”  
I want to ask why but I bite my tongue, “Listen Missouri, it was nice to see you but-”  
“You have to get home to your dad, yeah I figured. But before you leave town you stop by and see me. You hear?”  
I get back in my car and start the engine, but before I close the door I lean out and call to her, “It was nice seeing you again, and I’ll stop by. I promise.”  
When I get back to my old home dad still isn’t awake. I don’t blame him, it’s barely after seven and even on a good day he would never be awake this early. There’s nothing to do besides watch some TV or clean this rats nest and I don’t even clean my home. I find something stupid to watch on the Syfy network and send a text to Cas telling him that when eve he gets the time to call me.  
My phone rings ten minutes later and I can here Cas yawning into the receiver, “Are you ok?”  
“Yeah, and when I said had the time, I meant when you were more awake.”  
“I can go if you want me to.”  
Damn it this guy needed to stop being so nice, it’s making me itch. “No that’s fine. I actually have something to tell you. It’s funny when you think about it. You’re going to laugh.”  
“What is it?”  
Even though we’re not in the same room I look down at the floor and stare at the old fast food wrappers, “Well I woke up early this morning and went to the gas station for food. You should have see the selection, nothing like the one next to your apartment.”  
“Dean you’re stalling.”  
“Anyways I ran into Michael, and he started being a douche bag, so I told him I have a boyfriend whose name is Castiel. And I might have told him that you were stopping by later this week.”  
“Dean-”  
“No listen, it’s not like we’re going to run into each other again and even if we do it’s not like he’s going to ask about you. I just started talking without thinking what I was saying. I tend to do that a lot. I even think I’m doing that right not, but yeah it happens. Wow I’m talking a lot I should stop now.” I clamp a hand over my mouth and squeeze my eyes shut. Why did I have to be such a screw up?  
“I can come down if you want me too.”  
‘No.” I don’t even hesitate, “I can’t ask you to do that.”  
“It’s not like I’m needed at work, they can manage without me.” And not for the billionth time I question just what it us Castiel does for a living, “And I’m due a vacation.”  
“This wouldn’t be a vacation Cas. My dad is insane and the people here all think I am too. No I don’t want to drag you into this. And besides, it’s only five more days. I just wanted to tell you what an ass I made out of myself.” And I wanted to hear your voice the first thing in the morning.  
“I have nothing better to do up here.”  
“And if you came down here you’d see just how crazy my life is and you wouldn’t ever want to talk to me again.”  
“Oh my God what an even better reason for me to drive down.”  
“I’ll think about it.” the idea is tempting, but who am I kidding? Cas would see just how messed up my dad is and he’ll finally see why I’m so broken and he won’t want to risk being poisoned by me. It’s how it always goes.  
“Or I could just ask Bobby for your address and surprise you. I honestly don’t want to go into work this week. Gabriel is being a real dick and I need to show him that he can manage by himself. At least for a few days. Anyways you’re in Kansas? I could be there by noon. Do you honestly want to sit with your dad all alone for the next few days?”  
I don’t, but I also don’t want him to see all of this, “You’re not going to get scared and leave in the middle of the night are you?” I say it jokingly but I know he can hear the shake in my voice. He doesn’t bring it up.  
“Never.”  
“Good.”  
Dad wakes up around ten. Which gives me two hours to try and break it to him that I’m having one of my friends stay with us for the next few days, and when I say that it’s a boy he starts asking all the normal questions. “So wait. You have a boyfriend?”  
“We’re not dating.”  
“Is this the same boy you were on the phone with last night?” I want to ask how he knows that, but it’s obvious he must have come up to check on me and heard me talking. I wonder what all he heard. I blush and turnaround from the table and dig in the mini mart bag and hand him a few pigs in a blankets. “Will he- will he be sharing a room with you.”  
“If he does it’s because the rest of the house is too dirty for a human to sleep in.”  
Dad wrinkles his nose at me but doesn’t say anything, “I guess I should clean up a bit, but this house is too big for just one person to clean.”  
I almost say that mom did it all by herself, but I don’t want to get into a fight so I keep my mouth shut about that, “I’ll help you.”  
He looks surprised and gets up when I do. The pantry looks like it too hasn’t been touched since I left, but thankfully most cleaning products don’t go bad for a long time. I tell dad to tackle the living room, the room where he spent most of his time making a mess even a pig would think was gross. I in turn stay in the kitchen and start to work. If there had to be one thing I really hate about my apartment, it would be the kitchen.   
I love big kitchens.   
Cas doesn’t show up right at noon, and I didn’t expect him to, but when he doesn’t show up by 12:30 and dad and I have cleaned almost every room in the house and most of the laundry is put up or piled on top of the dryer, and there’s nothing left for me to do, I start to worry. What if he was just messing with me? He was probably just getting my hopes up. Michael use to do that.  
It’s one o’clock and even dad starts to look at the clock like it’s the reason we’re stuck sitting here like a couple of dumbasses.  
“How about I run to the store and get us some beer and hamburgers?” it’s almost like he’s apologizing for the let down I’m experiencing.   
I don’t want him to be buying anymore beer, but I could do with a cold one. So I nod my head and he heads out the door without a word and I slump a little lower in my chair. At 15 after one I hear my dad come back and I decide to meet him outside. This way I can get my beer quicker.  
But it’s not dad’s car sitting at the curb, it’s the pimpmobile.  
“Hey!” Cas swings his legs out of the car and I just stare. I can’t believe that I actually thought he would play some cruel joke on me. Cas is too nice for that. “Sorry it took me longer than I expected, Gabriel would not let me leave without explaining things to him.”  
“Who’s Gabriel?” out of all the things that’s going on I have to ask who Gabriel is. I could give two fucks about Gabriel, because now I don’t have to be alone with the man who can barely tolerate me.  
He shrugs and I let it slide because I’m suddenly in a really good mood. Again I see the neighbors staring out of their windows, their ugly faces peeking out from perfect curtains and flower beds.


	4. There for you, as friends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I couldn’t say anything to that, I didn’t know if I could catch him, or myself. Life was messed up like that, at least mine was. I could not find myself to lie to him and tell him I would be there, because I didn’t want to hurt him. And that was the whole problem.   
> Not wanting to hurt people came from my whole life; everything I have done, shoving people away and creating walls to separate my thoughts from my feelings has all been in the attempt to keep people away from me. To keep them away from the fire that burned everyone I touched.

“So what do you do for a living?” my dad was actually having a decent conversation with Cas while I sorted through a takeout menu I found while cleaning earlier. It was surprising he was this normal, and not drunk. I stand up to get a beer from the kitchen, and Cas’s eyes follow me. It’s not weird having him here like I feared it might. Instead I actually feel like him being here is going to be good for me.  
Cas keeps me grounded.  
I don’t hear Cas’s response to dad’s question but I can imagine it being something nondescript, ‘oh I just do a lot of things for people’ or something like that.  
I stand by the fridge for a bit, not really wanting to listen more to the annoying small talk my dad was trying to do, it was nice of him to try…it’s just he’s not good at things like that. I guess that’s where I got it from. When I look up from taking a swig of my beer I see Cas coming my way and I smile, then I realize what I’m doing and I blush.  
“You’re dad wanted a beer.”  
“Shocking.” Mines already almost more than half empty and I wonder when that happened, “Do you want Thai food?”  
“Sure.” He pops the top off his beer before leaning against the fridge with me, “You promise to tell me if you’re not feeling up to this?” and by ‘this’ I figure he means the whole Lawrence thing.  
“Sure.” I kick my foot back against the fridge and stand up, “Promise.” There’re something in my voice, I hope Cas can’t hear it… “You still like Thai food dad?” Cas follows me back into the living room and hands my dad his beer before he sits down on the other side of the room.  
“Yeah, haven’t had it in a while though.” I call up the restaurant and order for everyone, the girl on the phone sounds young and timid, and when she tells me that they don’t do delivery anymore she sounds scared enough to just hang up the phone. “You two kids go on and pick it up without me.”  
So we do. Cas gets in my car and I follow him out, “You know where you’re going?”  
It’s nowhere near dark yet, so I grab my sunglasses from the consul and turn to give Cas a look. “Nothing ever changes in Lawrence, and besides, I use to go to the Thai place all the time with Michael.”  
“Oh.”   
“When I first changed schools, it was weird because it was still in the same town, only this one was for the richer kids. The people on the east side of town, as you can tell I’m in the middle so I was allowed to enroll. Anyways, the Thai place was new and so everyone had to be there, I had a part time job next door so that’s where I got my food. That’s where I met Michael actually.”  
“Oh.”  
“Would you stop saying ‘oh’ like that? It makes me feel like I’m a charity case.”  
“Fine Dean, what do you expect me to say to that? Oh wow that’s so cool that you’re telling me where you met your last ex who basically ruined you for relationships, wow great. I’m grateful for you having told me.”  
I slow down for a stop sign and look over at him, “I thought you liked when I got these things off my chest, I thought it was ‘good for the soul’ or some shit.”  
He looks down at the hem of his shirt and fiddles with the seatbelt end lying across his lap, “Yeah it is, ignore me.”  
“I told you that you didn’t have to come down here and you said that you wouldn’t hate me. So what the fuck is up?”  
“Nothing.”  
“Fine.”  
“Fine.”  
“Freaking child.”  
“What?” but I turn up the music to where I can pretend I don’t hear him and I cruise through downtown until I find the right street. Everything is starting to bring back memories, that bench was where Michael first kissed me.  
Over there under that tree was where he first told me that he thought I was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen. I look over at Cas, sitting in the passenger seat. Right there was where he and I fought for the first time. It was about something stupid I’m sure, but he kept yelling and I didn’t know yet that I wasn’t suppose to fight back. Until he hit me. And I jumped out of the passenger seat while he was driving twenty miles an hour.  
He stopped the car right away and he told me he would never do it again and he starred crying. It was too much so I forgave him. And so began my four months of hell.  
“Is that it Dean?” Cas’s voice snaps me out of my thoughts and I shake my head, “Yeah.”

When I wake up the next morning to the sound of Cas’s breathing in my ear, but before I can jerk from shock I remember that it’s just him. It’s only Cas. The last time a boy was in this bed it was a long time ago.  
I straighten my legs and Cas’s toes brush against my calves. I must have rolled over in the middle of the night because my back is facing him and if he woke up right now he’d see that we’re spooning. Carefully I remove myself from his arms and legs and get up from the bed the clock on my phone says that it’s almost 8:30 and I groan, why on God’s green earth am I even awake? But there’s no use fighting it, I wake up early some days and the other days I’m too drunk to wake up. This is the better of the two options. I lay back down, not wanting to sleep, but not wanting to wake up.  
“I hate that.”  
Cas’s voice startles me, and I turn my head to look at him, “Hate what.”  
“Dreaming, but not being able to remember your dream.” I raise my eyebrow at him, telling him to explain. Every dream I’ve had I can mostly remember, even the nightmares stay with me for years. “When I dream I remember it as snap shots, like that summer from ages ago. You remember the beach and the way the clouds climbed into the heavens, you just don’t remember how the waves sounded, or the way that the sand felt between your toes. You know it was nice and pleasant, just not the whole memory.”  
“When I dream I remember the voices clearly, the pictures fade, but the sound-” worthless, poison, “the words stay with me forever.”  
Cas reached one hand out and tucked a piece of my hair behind my ear, “And what do you dream about Deana Winchester?”  
I can’t help but smile, I like the way my name comes pouring out of his lips. That voice can stay with me for as long as I like. But then I remember what he was asking, my dreams. Dreams come rarely, being too tired to dream happens to me a lot. And when I do, Sam is there. But it’s not baby Sam. It’s the boy I imagined he would have grown up to be. I’ve created a whole little world for him to live in… it only he had lived. “My brother mostly, sometimes my car, or my friends. There’s not a lot in my life that I think about other than those who I consider family. And those people tend to stick with me. Even if I don’t want them to.”  
“Like who.” But I think he already knows the answer. “You know that Michael doesn’t control you, and that you live so far away from him, with a career and those friends you consider family don’t care if you had a stinky boyfriend who was worse than horse shit.”  
I look at him, our faces so close together because of our position. Laying down on a bed will tend to do that. “You’re a good person Castiel.”  
“I try.” He smiles and I do too.  
“I’m serious, you are. What are you doing with a person like me?”  
“What am I doing?”  
He turned my question back at me and the smile faltered on my face, “Cas I-”  
“I know that you said you don’t date, and I respect that. So tell me why I’m laying in a bed with you with our faces so close together and tell me why my heart is beating faster than it ever has before. And why your fingers have crept closer to mine.”  
I jerk back my hand and bring them up to my face, “Cas I can’t, I’m poison. I’m broken.” His hand grabbed at my chin and forced my head up, so that I was looking at him.   
“Why would you say that?”  
I could tell that there were tears in my eyes waiting to be shed, but I blinked my eyes furiously. I was not going to cry because of him. I was done crying over guys. “It’s the truth. Everyone I try to be with, or love me back end up getting hurt. It’s only a matter of time.”  
“That’s not true Dean.”  
“Then I’m broken.” I wish there was some emotion in my voice, but there’s not. I feel empty and it hurts to feel so hollow. “I’m broken and I don’t think I could love someone without being afraid. I don’t want to be afraid to be with you.”  
“Maybe those other people hurt you Dean, I get that, but I won’t.”  
“Why? Why are you trying so hard to be with me?”  
“I don’t know.” My wrists were still in his hands and I looked down at them now, I was not small and petite. I was not girly and frail. I was strong. You could see the muscle in my arms, and the scars on my knuckle. I was stronger than I was five years ago. “The day you woke up in my apartment and the way you kissed me for the first time, I was already falling.”  
“Falling hurts Cas.”  
“Not if there’s someone there to catch you.”

I couldn’t say anything to that, I didn’t know if I could catch him, or myself. Life was messed up like that, at least mine was. I could not find myself to lie to him and tell him I would be there, because I didn’t want to hurt him. And that was the whole problem.   
Not wanting to hurt people came from my whole life; everything I have done, shoving people away and creating walls to separate my thoughts from my feelings has all been in the attempt to keep people away from me. To keep them away from the fire that burned everyone I touched.  
I was sitting in my bathroom, the one connected to my room, so I could hear him moving around in my room. And I’m pretty sure he could hear me if I moved, which I haven’t. I haven’t moved from my position on the bathroom floor. My knees are up to my chest and I don’t think I’ve hugged someone as tight as I’m hanging onto my legs. All I want to do is curl up into a ball. It would be easier to ignore life that way.  
But I can’t, and with a sigh I push myself off the bathroom floor and stare at the mirror above the sink. There’s no trace of my sadness and I think this is such a cruel gift of fate, because when I do feel, no one else can see it.  
Maybe it’s better off that way?  
There are clothes in here, clean ones that I haven’t had to energy to put up. I quickly change into them and brush my teeth. The normal routine, the one I always go through. It doesn’t matter if I’m here in Kansas or at home in my small apartment. The normalcy of a routine makes everyone feel slightly better. I feel cleaner, and refreshed and when I walk out of the bathroom Cas gives me an odd look and I wink at him; it’s as if what he said earlier, what I said earlier, didn’t happen. And I’m fine with thinking that. Even though I know he won’t be. But for now he’ll let it slide, mainly because that’s what he does. He wants to make people feel happy, even if that makes them angry sometimes, or upset.  
He’s a good person.  
Too good for me. I shake the thoughts out of my head, and every thought like that. He will never be mine anyway. He’ll grow bored of trying to woo me and find someone else. It’s better this way. “Are you hungry?”  
“All the time.”  
“Well I grab my keys and I can show you this great little diner on the west side of town. It’s small and looks dirty but I tell you what, the food is better than any five star restaurant.”

When I pull up there are already several trucks parked in the parking lot, I’m shocked because it’s nine thirty on a Tuesday morning. But there are plenty of tables and booths left so I grab one in the far back. I don’t want too many people coming to say hi to me. I don’t think I would be civil enough this early in the morning. Our waitress comes up and I don’t recognize her, she seems younger than me. The age Sammy would have been.  
“What would you two like to drink?”  
“Coffee black.”  
Cas looks up from the menu and I see our server do a double take and she smiles more at him than she had been at me, I don’t know why but I feel something twist in my gut and I’m suddenly considering not tipping her as much as I should. “What about you hun?”  
“Apple juice.”  
“Alrighty, I’ll be right back.”  
She turns and sashays away, “Is the kitchen here clean?”   
“How should I know, I don’t work here. But the food is good, like I told you. I use to know the cook. I bet he still works here.” Cas gives me a look and I ignore him. It’s probably something snarky and I didn’t sign up for that. “Do you never eat in the diners back home?”  
“Only one, and that’s because my brother got me hooked.”  
“Brother?” Cas rarely talks about himself, his personal life. Sure he’ll tell me about what his favorite shows are, mostly old ones, and he’ll tell me that he doesn’t like coffee because it makes him too jittery. But he never really talks about what he does for a living and his family. I don’t want to pry but I don’t also don’t want to be associated with a mobster, because that could happen. Probably.  
I don’t get the chance to ask about his brother because our too flirty waitress comes back and sets down my coffee and Cas’s juice. “Ok sweetie, what would you like to eat?”  
Cas looks helplessly at me and I smile back, “You don’t have to get breakfast, their burgers are good. I probably gained a lot of weight the year I worked here.”  
“Nah, it’s early and breakfast sounds good. I’ll take the short stack with bacon, hash browns, scrambled eggs and biscuits.”  
“Alrighty.” I didn’t like the way she said that, but I ignored it and looked up at the wall above the bar. “And for you?”  
“It’s Tuesday? I didn’t wait for her to answer, “I’ll take the pig n’ a poke.” She didn’t say alrighty to me.  
“So you worked here?” Cas leaned across the table and picked up my straw and stuck it in his glass.  
“Back in sophomore year. I needed money and the people here were really friendly. When I started dating Michael he told me that I didn’t have to work because his parents were rich and he could take care of everything for me. But I think he just didn’t want to share me with other people. I was his.”   
“I take it you didn’t like being told that.”  
I shrug. “He was nice for the first six months. Everything was great. But I don’t know…one day something flipped inside him.” I did know what had caused it, but I didn’t feel like sharing, it was too painful. Even now. “Sometimes I think about what would have happened if he hadn’t had gone insane, where would I be now? You know?”  
“Yeah, I went to Yale and I changed my major around my third year. My parents were so mad that they cut me off for a full month. Then they got mad that I could make it without them so I went back to them and…I don’t know, they give me more leeway. More than my brother and sister get.” He shrugs again and almost downs his juice, it’s weird. I never expected him to tell me this much about himself at once. I didn’t want to push, but I had to know more.  
“Anna is you sister and your brother is…?”  
“Gabriel.” He offered no explanation, but I had gotten this much out of him.  
My coffee was starting to cool down and I sipped at it before leaning across the table, “I thought you said that you worked with Gabriel?”  
I saw him look down at his hands that were now in his lap, “Yeah, it’s kind of a family business.”  
“What kind of business?” I could see that he was uncomfortable so I leaned back and grabbed my coffee cup and held it between my hands. I read that somewhere the warmth of a hot cup can sooth the mind, because it reminds us of being close to another person. I wanted to be close to someone. “Because you obviously don’t have to work a lot and you have a really nice apartment, so what is it you do? Tax accountant? You dress like one.”  
I smiled and he grinned uneasily back. “It’s nothing important Dean-”  
“Dean?” there was a shrill voice right beside our table and I jumped in my seat, “As in Dean Winchester? I mean, it’s not like many girls go around with a boy’s name.” it was our waitress, she was carrying our food and she looked like she’d seen a ghost. Although if she knew me then she had seen ghost. I tried to ignore the fact that she so blatantly called my name a boy’s name and sounded like it was stupid. Freaking bitch, “Ohmygod, you are Dean Winchester, just wait ‘til I tell my sister who came back to lil’ ol’ Lawrence.”  
I looked at her, she did look familiar, but I didn’t think I knew her, “And who’s you sister?”  
She looked uncertain then and looked at the food in her hands. Quickly she started putting down our plates, “Well I know that you two were never really friends, but you helped her out a few times.” She sat down the last plate and looked at me, she had dark hair. “Meg Maters is my sister.”  
“Oh,” sure I’d helped her out once, and I may have fought her twenty times. “I remember Meg, she’s a lovely person.” Meg’s sister smiled and left, I never did catch her name. “I hated her sister.”  
Cas looked up from me from his mountain of food, “Really?”  
“Yeah her and I use to go round for round. I beat he up behind the movie theater so many times and she tried to be me up and calls me names at school. Good times.”  
Cas looked like he was seeing me for the first time, “So you beat her up?”  
“She was a bitch.”  
“I thought you said you helped her out once.”   
There was a sudden tense feeling in my shoulders, “She and lived near each other and therefore we could go to either school. When she first transferred to the rich one a lot of girls picked on her, and when I helped her not be such a dork she became a bitch and spent every minute of her free time trying to find a way to make me feel like I was lesser than her, even though I had more than she did. And everyone knew it; they just liked her better because she acted right. She was the perfect high school bitch.”  
“Oh.”  
“Now don’t go changing the subject, you were telling me about your career.”  
Cas flushed and I picked up a piece of my sausage and bit into it.


	5. A trip to Missouri

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I woke up because I could hear a phone buzzing on the floor beside me, “Hello?”  
> “This is clearly not Cassie.” The speaker was a man and he was obviously amused.  
> But it was too early for me to find any humor, “And this is clearly not my phone."

A few weeks ago  
There really was no reason Castiel was home on a Friday night, his brother Gabriel had told him to come on over anytime he wanted, and he had a few girls phone numbers in his cell, but something was off about today. Tilted.  
There was a marathon of old movies on the syfy channel and it’s not like his brother would make him feel any better. No it was better if he just stayed home and cheered as the 50 foot women blundering around. His eyes flickered over to the clock on his wall and he ran a hand over his eyes. It was already past ten and he didn’t feel tired at all. He would have liked to gone out and at least done something, but with who? There was a buzzing sound coming from the kitchen and with a sigh Castiel stood up and picked up his phone from the counter, “Hello? Charlie?”  
There was loud music in the background and he struggled to hear what she was saying, “Cassie baby!” her voice seemed slower and her words were drawn out, if not slurred. “Can you do me a favor?” her voice became easier to understand and Castiel thought that she must have found a quieter place, “You remember me telling you about my friend Dean?”  
“Sort of.”  
“Can you please come here and get her?”  
Dean was a girl? Out of everything that Charlie had told him he just assumed… “Wait where are you?”  
There were other voices coming through the line now, but only muffled. People must have been walking by, “I’m in a bathroom darling, its quieter here.” Castiel made an impatient noise and Charlie laughed, “The Fallen, it’s a club. I bet if you leave your home now you can be here in twenty minutes.”  
He was already grabbing his keys, “What do you want me to do with Dean?” admittedly that sounded weirder than he intended, but whatever.  
“I don’t know, ask her. She’s just too drunk to walk home and I don’t trust anyone else not to be grabsy.”  
“I’ll see you in twenty minutes.”

There was no place to park nearby so Castiel had to walk three blocks before he came up to a building where there was music so loud that it was pouring out into the street. “Can I help you?”  
Castiel jumped, startled by whoever had spoken. “Excuse me?”  
A shadow picked itself of from the wall and walked over to where Castiel was standing by the door. “Ten dollars for men.”  
“Excuse me?” he asked again, “I’m here to pick up one of my friends, she’s too drunk and I’m here to help her home.” The bouncer laughed and moved a little closer to where Castiel had planted his feet firmly on the ground, he also had a few inches on the bouncer.  
“You’re still going inside, ten dollars.”  
Castiel handed the man a bill and pushed his way inside and looked around for bright red hair. Luckily he didn’t have to wait long because suddenly there was someone clinging onto his jacket sleeve pulling him one way, “Took you long enough Cassie, anyways this is Deana Winchester.”  
She pointed to a girl with shot glasses pooled around her like a barrier.  
Her hair was twisted up into a really messy bun and her dark green dress left barely anything the imagination. She didn’t look all that comfortable, but that might have been the copious amounts of alcohol cursing through her veins. “Hello handsome.” Her words weren’t slurred but when she went to stand up she fell right back over. Those heels weren’t helping anything. “Are you here to take me home?”  
Castiel helped her up, but he had to keep his hands around her arms to keep her up, “If that’s what you want.”  
“I want to take you home.” She whispered it in his ear and he could feel myself blush.  
“Come on, you probably need to sleep.”  
“Dormir.”  
“Yes dormir.” The bouncer didn’t give them a second glance as they stumbled out the door and down the street. Before they could make the first block however she had almost broken her ankles too many times to count. “Dean?”  
“Yes handsome?” she rolled her head to look at Castiel and smile, but her eyes were out of focus and he don’t think she saw him.  
“I’m going to carry you now, is that alright? I just don’t want you to get hurt.” She nodded her head and he swung her up into his arms. She was heavier than he thought she would be and he almost dropped her. “Hey hey hey, don’t go to sleep yet, not yet Dean.” If she fell asleep Castiel wouldn’t be able to get her home and he didn’t know how she would react to waking up in a strange apartment.  
“My dad use to sleep a lot.”  
“He doesn’t now?” she shrugged and he dropped it, who knows what could be going on in her mind right now.  
Her hand came up and she gripped his shirt collar, “Sammy would never sleep, he was a bad baby. Always crying and shitting, mom forgot about me. But Sammy was so cute that I forgave him. I forgive him.” She let go of his shirt and put her hands around her mouth and shouted into the empty night air, “You hear that Sam! I forgive you!”  
Castiel wanted to ask what she forgave him for, and who Sam was, but he didn’t. Castiel put her down carefully and her knees almost buckled completely. He sat her in the passenger seat and clicked her seatbelt in place, “Hang tight.”  
When he got into the driver’s side he looked over and saw her jaw slack and her head rolling onto the window. Castiel sighed and put his car into drive, it seems like he has to let her sleep it off in his apartment.

After the diner Cas said he wanted to just be alone, and I understand. He told me things he probably hasn’t ever told anyone else. And I’m the jerk that pushed for it. His family was apparently very rich and very mad that he only wanted to stay and do accounting for their business. He never told me what exactly that was but I got the impression that its very well known though out the country.  
He had left the diner first; I stayed a few minutes after, just in case he decided it would be smarter to actually ride in a car. But after ten minutes I stood up and tossed a few bills on the table. On the drive back to my dad’s home I didn’t see him on the road anywhere, and the house was still empty. I had no idea where my dad might have been but I was feeling restless so I did the thing I would never do. Ever.  
My shoes were the hardest things to find. It was easy to find a pair of shorts and a shirt, but my running shoes…I must have worn them five times back in high school. They fit, but that was only one less reason for me not to do this.  
Surprisingly I wasn’t dying by the time I finished the first block, and by the time I rounded the corner that lead to the town square I was hitting wall and just coming back up and feeling better. My stride got longer and my feet moved faster, it was only when he came out of the store so fast that I didn’t have time to move around or slow down. Instead I barreled right into him and landed hard on my back, my head his the sidewalk and for a moment I swear I saw stars or a flash of light…  
“Oh my God, Dean I am so sorry.”  
There was a hand on my shoulder and someone was lifting me up and I opened my eyes to see Michael pulling me up and I jerked back away from him, “No I should have been paying attention.” And even after all these years I was still defending him.  
“Listen, it sounded like you hit your head pretty hard. Do you want me to drive you back to your dad’s?”  
He let go of my arm and I swayed a bit, “I’m fine.” The ground swayed beneath me and I would have fallen again if he didn’t catch me.  
“It’s no trouble really.”  
I went to check my pockets for m phone but these shorts done have pockets and there’s no way I can call Cas for help. “Alright, I didn’t feel like running back anyways.” I was still short of breath. And I’m sure my face was red and blotchy and gross. Perfect. Maybe this time he won’t try and reestablish old connections.  
He starts walking down the sidewalk with his hand still on my shoulder, “So did your boyfriend ever make it down here?”  
“Cas?” my mind goes blank on why he would be called my boyfriend then I remembered lying in the gas station the other day. I’m such a fuck up. “Yeah he got here the other day.”  
“That’s cool, so does your old man like him? Because I remember it was a hard thing to get John to talk to me.”  
It’s not like talking to you is all that great, and he was probably drunk half of the time you came over. “Yeah dad warmed up to him from the start. Cas just makes everyone like him. He’s a real good guy.”  
“You sound like you really like him.”   
That’s not what I was meaning to do, “Yeah.” We got to Michael’s car and he helped me in and went around and started up the fairly new ford focus. It wasn’t a really nice car but for a new car it was nice.  
After a while he decided to start the conversation back up again, “So what have you been doing these past few years?”  
“Well I went to California right after I left here, I wanted to just…I don’t know. But I’ve been in South Dakota for the past three years. I’m a mechanic.” That’s it, that’s all I’m allowing him to know about me.  
Michael started to tap out a beat on the steering wheel, “I bet you’re a really good mechanic, considering the car you drive. I remember when you first started fixing it up. You could barely open the doors.”  
“I could open the doors, you couldn’t.” the drumming stopped and he turned to look at me.  
“Well it was a piece of shit.”  
I roll my eyes and I see him tighten his hands on the wheel and I smile, he knows he can’t do anything to me. I’m not his anymore. We get to my block and I almost let out a sigh, “Well this is me.” I point at the house and he slows down.  
“Do you need me to help you to the door?”  
I’d sooner rather crawl there, “I’m fine.”  
When I look back up at the house I see Cas leaning against the doorframe of the house, “Dean, where did you go?” he looks at the car I was in and he frowns. Then he sees me kind of stumble and he quickly comes to my side, “Are you alright?”   
The driver side door opens up and I hear Michael stand up, “She ran into me downtown, like actually ran into me.”  
“It wasn’t my fault.” I mumble it but I’m sure Cas heard it.  
“I’m Michael by the way.” Cas’s hands tighten around my sides and he pulls me away from the car. “You’re Castiel, Dean’s boyfriend?”  
“That’s me. So thanks for driving her back, but I should get her inside.” I smile up at him and he doesn’t take his eyes away from Michael. There’s something about the way he’s looking at Michael, it makes me nervous.  
“I just want something to drink Cas.” I did run for a long time, and it seemed like the only way to break up this staring contest.  
Cas bends his head down to stare at me and one of his hands come up to feel at the knot quickly forming on the back of my head, “Of course. Let’s go inside.” He takes my hand and when the door closes behind us he stops, “So why were you running in town?”  
I shrug my shoulders, “I don’t know, I was bored and you left. That was the most I’ve ran in maybe ten years.”  
“Alright.”  
“I bet we convinced him we were dating. It was a nice touch seeming jealous.”  
“Yeah.” He starts walking towards the kitchen and pours me a glass of water. “I just don’t like him.”  
“No one does.”   
“You did.”  
It was a low blow, “What the hell man?”  
Cas’s back is to me as he fumbles at the sink, “Sorry.” He hands me the glass and I stare at him.  
His face is red like mine probably is, “You alright?”  
“I wasn’t pretending to be jealous Dean. You know I like you, so you might have been pretending out there but I wasn’t.”

“Tell me about high school.”  
“The best thing about high school was listening to Dark Side of the Moon and getting so stoned, until that one time I woke up in a Denny’s parking lot half naked.”  
Cas and I were sitting in the living room staring at the TV, the sound was all the way down and the clock read 2:17 in the morning. “I don’t think I want to know about that story.”  
“I could tell you about all the swirlies I got.”  
He looked at me and rolled his eyes, “Tell me about California then.”  
The house was cold and I didn’t have any socks on, only a pair of sweats and an old shirt, so I stuck my feet underneath Cas’s legs and I smiled when he winced at how cold my feet were. “The first few months were bad, I didn’t have any money, and I had maybe two different shirts in my car. I lived in my car. Any money I got went towards buying gas, that was until I something in the engine broke and I had to go to a mechanic and then I got a job there working part time by cleaning for them. The boss never let me work on any of the cars that came in, but sometimes he would let me stay after and tinker on mine.” The show we weren’t watching went off and something else came on. I briefly looked at the screen then turned back to Cas. “I had to quit one night, it was almost two years after having my job there when the bosses son tried to get to friendly and I punched him and he fell back onto the dirt.” Cas reside his eyebrows but didn’t say anything, “I may have kicked the shit out of him and fled to another part of California. I went farther up north to where the mountains were. There I got a job at AutoZone and I worked there until this band came into town. They did live covers of classic rock songs. I quit and joined them.”   
“What do you play?”  
“I know how to play the guitar.”  
“I play the piano.”  
“I’m not surprised.” He hit my arm and I smiled, “No offence. The piano is really nice. I actually really like the sound of it.”  
“So what made you stop playing with the band?”  
I yawned and so did Cas, it was late and I was tired. Cas kept rubbing small circles along my legs and I was tempted to fall asleep right there. “We were playing in this dive, real sleazy and stuff. Well I went out to smoke and I saw this man and woman fighting and I punched him and beat him up. I don’t know. I was angry and a little bit drunk. So when the cops came I was in the wrong and I went to jail. By the time my dad came, three weeks later, the band had left and I drove my dad home and left. I drove until my car broke down in Sioux Falls. I’ve been there ever since. Bobby was the one that found my broken down a few miles outside of town. He towed me to his shop and said ‘We’re closed today but we can have it fixed in no time.’ I told him I didn’t have any money but he just shook his head and told me not to worry about it.” he went inside to get the phone and I just started to work on my own. He came out and saw what I was doing and sat me down in the kitchen.  
“I lived in his house for five months until I could pay for my own apartment. I met Jo and Charlie sometime in my first month of being there when Benny took me out for drinks. He was upset that I turned him down, but now he’s like a brother so it’s good. Everything is good.” It was odd, that everything in my life was perfect. I had never noticed how well things were going and I had never realized how happy I’ve been. “And I met you two months ago.”  
My eye lids were really heavy. “Let’s get you to bed.” Castiel stood up and he picked me up and started to carry me upstairs.  
“Cas that sounds dirty.” I hear him laugh and I can feel the deep vibrations in his chest and I don’t remember coming into my room. I only remember my back hitting the mattress and Cas curling up on the far side of my bed. “I’m glad I met you.” I don’t know if the words actually made it out of my mouth, but he grabbed my hand and squeezed once. Then the world fell away from me and my dreams weren’t of fire for the first time in a long time.

I woke up because I could hear a phone buzzing on the floor beside me, “Hello?”  
“This is clearly not Cassie.” The speaker was a man and he was obviously amused.  
But it was too early for me to find any humor, “And this is clearly not my phone. Just tell me what you want and I’ll tell him.”  
The man laughed and I felt like punching him, “Tell him his favorite brother called, the handsome one, and that I need the transactions done by tomorrow. Friday.”  
“Holy shit. I almost fell out of the bed, Tomorrow’s Friday?”  
“Which usually follows Thursday.”   
I didn’t respond to him, instead I hung up the phone and rushed out of my room where I felt like it had suddenly spiked a few hundred degrees hotter. My feet came to a stop in front of a nursery. Sam’s nursery.  
After the fire dad never put anything back to where it belonged. So now it was just an empty room with smoke stained walls. Even after all of these years I could still smell it. Nothing had made it through the fire, so all of Sam’s things were gone and all that I had left of him were a few pictures downstairs. So this room was meaningless. Nothing was in here for me to look at, nothing was in here for me to feel a connection with. I had a scrapbook in my room tucked under my bed for God’s sake.  
Cas wandered by a few minutes later with his phone in his hand. I could hear another voice on the other end of the line and I knew that it was his brother. I made a good impression.  
Cas saw me and smiled and I tried to smile back. After he said goodbye he came into the room and set down on the ground next to me. The walls weren’t completely white. And he just looked at the patterns created by the smoke. “It’s May,”  
“Congratulations on figuring it out.”  
He frowned at me and I smiled, “So what brother did I have a heartfelt conversation with?”  
Cas looked down at his phone, like he forgot that he just talked to someone. He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and shrugged, “It was just Gabriel. He wanted me to know some stuff about work but I think he can do it by himself.”  
“Must be nice not having to work.”  
“Must be nice being a bitch.”  
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” he hit my arm and I hit him back. “What time is it?”  
He reached back for his phone, “A little after eleven.”  
“Why is it so early?”  
“Dean it’s almost noon.”  
“I’m on vacation.” I pointed to the sweats and t shirt I was wearing and he wrinkled his nose, “I don’t even have to change clothes if I don’t want to.”  
“I think you probably should.”   
“Fine.” I stood up and offered my hand to him and together we went back to my room. He sat down on the bed while I went to the bathroom and started up the shower. But before I took my clothes off I went back to my room and Cas looked up, curious. “So today…I was wondering if you wanted to go somewhere with me? To an old friends.”  
“Sure.” He picked up one of his shirts and peeled it off. “As long as I don’t have to come to your rescue again.”  
I wanted to say something rude to him, but he turned so slightly and I saw his wings and the muscles that corded their way through his back and I had to slam the door shut behind me. I can’t think like this. Cas is a friend. Unsurprisingly I took a cold shower and when I got out thankfully he wasn’t in the room because I had forgotten to grab a change of clothes.   
I pulling on a pair of Captain America underwear when the door opens behind me and I don’t think I pull my discarded towel up fast enough. “Ohmygod I am so sorry. I should have knocked.”  
“It’s uh, ok. Nothing you haven’t seen before.” I should tell him to leave. I should tell him that the way his eyes are raking over my body doesn’t make me feel like I want him to do that with his hands.  
“Right.” His hand noticeably tightens around the doorknob and I try to swallow with a dry mouth.  
“Right.” My hands tighten around the towel and I look down to see that doing that…tightening my hands actually brings the towel tighter across my body and I stop. “Well uh-” I dart back into the bathroom and throw on my old clothes. By the time that I get out Cas is already gone and I sink down onto the ground next to my bed. He’s my friend.  
I don’t date.  
He’s too good for me.  
When I sit down at the kitchen table a few minutes later, in fresh clothes, Cas doesn’t say anything about what just happened but by the way he doesn’t look at me directly he sure as hell saw more than I wanted him to.  
But did I want to?  
No. defiantly not.  
“So who are we seeing today?”   
There’s a opened box of fruit loops so I stand up and pour myself a bowl. “She’s actually a person that helped raise me when my dad was too…busy. Her name is Missouri.”  
When we show up at Missouri’s she opens the door even before we get to the porch, “I knew you’d be over today, but I didn’t think you’d be bringing your boyfriend.” She motions for us to come inside. And we do, not much has changed since I was last here. It still seems like a normal home. It just doesn’t feel like one because of the person who lives here.  
“Oh we’re not dating.” Cas sits down on the couch.  
“Don’t you dare put your feet on my coffee table girl.” I glare at her and she tries to smack me. “And I would have thought by all the hormones you two are feeling towards each other that there had to be something there.”  
“Well there’s not.” I don’t want her digging into my life like that. She already seems to know everything about anything. She doesn’t need to know about my nonexistent love life.  
Missouri gives me a look that says ‘yea, sure doll’ and turns her attention to Cas. “What’s troubling you deary?”  
He seems taken aback and I feel kind of sorry for him. I forgot to mention that Missouri is this weird. She seems to just guess what you’re thinking. “Nothing.” Missouri glances back at me and she frowns.   
“I don’t understand why you kids seems on lying all the time.” I start to say something but she holds up her hand and I stop. “Don’t worry. You didn’t come here for me to lecture you.” she stands up and heads towards what I think is the kitchen and returns with three glasses of tea. “I told Dean to stop by some day and I figured it’d be today. Considering you’re leaving Saturday morning. Right?”  
“You’re still really weird.”  
“Shh you mouth.”  
I look at Cas who seems to be taking this in great strides. “So why are we here?”  
“I just wanted to see my favorite brat. Considering she spent nearly her first two years of school in this house. I taught her how to read you know.”


	6. Nine times out of ten

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I take a step closer to him and he takes a step back, “Only in blood.” My voice comes out even, it comes out cold. “You stopped being a father when mom and Sam died. But you know what? You had more family. You had a daughter. A daughter who lost her mother and brother in a fire that didn’t get her.” I take another step closer and he takes another step back. I don’t know why he’s acting so afraid of me, or why it feels right,

Before we left Missouri’s house she made me stay back while Cas went to the car. “Now you look me in the eye and tell me that you honestly don’t have romantic feelings towards that boy out there.” She grabbed hold of my arm and forced me to look at her.   
“I don’t date people. I haven’t dated someone since Michael.”  
She smacked me lightly and I had to brush the hair out of my face, “That was a different person a long time ago. Don’t you think that maybe you should let yourself be happy?”  
I pulled my arm out of her grasp and opened the front door back up. I could see Cas standing beside the passenger door. He was talking to a little kid, obviously making her laugh. “That’s not how it works. My life doesn’t have to revolve around love. I can manage just fine by myself.”  
“You’re lying.” Missouri turns her gaze to where I’m still looking.  
Cas picks up a flower growing in the grass and hands it to the little girl and she squeals with delight.“I know, but I need to tell myself this so I don’t hate myself more than I already do.”  
“You’re still lying. And this lie, it will make you empty inside.”  
“Maybe that’s what I want. I don’t want to feel a damn thing, because this,” I point to everything, to Cas, “this hurts too damn much when it’s over.” I close the door behind me. And Cas looks up at me as a approach.  
“What did she want?”  
I shrug and watch as he tells the little girl goodbye. She smiles and skips away. “Nothing important. She mainly just wanted to call me out on a few things.”  
“Like what?” again I just shrug and start the engine. “So what else do you want to do today? It’s only three.”  
I never did a lot of things without Michael. And before him I never really left my house because I didn’t have close enough friends. But there’s one idea. One thing I use to do whenever the smoking got to be too much or I couldn’t afford it; one thing that would calm me down when the booze wound me up too tight. “Do you like to go fishing?”  
Cas wrinkles his nose and stops when he realizes that I can see him. “I’ve never actually been. I’m just not fond of touching worms.”  
“Oh my God you are a rich kid.” I stop at a light and look over at him. “So yes? No?”  
“Sure.”  
I smile and turn on my blinker, “Then we’ll have to stop by the house to pick up some fishing poles and some bait.”  
We get to the lake thirty minutes later and I smile, it doesn’t look like much has changed. “So are you good at fishing?”  
“That depends on the fish.” I set down a blanket at the end of the dock and open the tackle box, “Do you want to just sit here?” Cas shrugs and I pull out only one worm. He watches as I string together my line.  
I can see him, watching my hands, “So did your dad teach you how to fish?”  
“Yes and no.” when I’m done and I’ve cast my line out I turn to him and pull one knee up to my chest, “He use to come out here a lot. And I would watch him string bait onto the hook, but he never let me fish with him. Maybe it was because we only had one pole, until I bought my own when I was 15. But by then he had stopped getting out much unless it was work or to get alcohol.  
I came out here almost every day the summer between my sophomore year and junior year. Before I transferred school and met Michael. And the only time I didn’t come out here was when I was too fucked up to figure out the way here.”  
“Believe it or not my older brother Balthazar actually knew how to fish; he just didn’t do it as much because our parents thought it was beneath him. I tried to go fishing once and wound up getting hit in the face by a huge carp.”  
After that we sit in silence for a while, but every now and then I’ll recast my line and Cas will ask a question and I’ll try to answer it. I’m sweating and I can tell he is too and I curse myself for not wearing shorts. “I wish I had brought a swim suit down here.”  
“Me too.”  
“I’m about to just say fuck it and jump in.” he laughs at me, “Don’t believe me?”  
“No I believe you, just I’m trying to picture you swimming in those bulky pants you’re wearing.” He points to the pants I’ve got on, the ones that maybe are a little but too big for me.  
“These are comfortable.”  
“I’d jump in but I’m too big of a baby.”  
I start to reel in my line, “Well where’s your phone.”  
“In the car. I didn’t want to risk it getting wet.”  
I nod my head and set the pole down beside me and I start to take off my shoes. “That’s a good idea. Hey we can at least stick our feet into the water.”   
He side eyes me but he kicks his shoes off to the side. “You’re not going to push me in are you?”  
“Really Cas?” I stand up to set my keys inside the tackle box and before I know it Cas’s arms are around me and I’m getting carried back to the end of the dock. “What the hell are you doing?”  
“Getting you before you get me.” We reach the end of the dock and I try to wiggle my way free.  
“Don’t you dare.”  
“Too late.” And the water engulfed me and when I reach the surface I have just enough time to see Cas jump off the dock and I turn my head away from the splash. “Oh my God this feels nice.”  
“I think I have water up my nose.” My feet just barely touch bottom and I try to wipe the water out of my eyes. “You’re a jerk.”  
“You were going to push me in.” I shrug again, but he probably can’t see it. Cas takes off his shirt and throws it onto the land and I look away from the way the water looks against his skin. “I hope you’re not expecting me to do that.” I splash water at him and it turns into a game of who wimps out first.  
He looses. “Alright. Stop. You win.”   
I laugh and swim in circles around him. “I always win.” I grabs for me and I dart away. Until I’m far away from him and I start to float on my back. At least I try. My clothes are weighing me down so I swim back towards shallow water. I toss my pants onto the dock, my shirt lands next to it and I lean back on my back. “I swear if I get burnt.” I laugh, but Cas doesn’t. I look back over at him and he’s looking everywhere but at me. “Dude, it’s just like a swim suit. And you saw more of me this morning.”  
“Right.” He coughs and tosses his pants back up onto the dock. “See that rock out there?” he points to a rock about two hundred yards away and I nod. “I bet I’ll beat you. One. Two.-” he curses as I knock his aside and start before he has the chance to recover.  
When he finally reaches the rock I look down at him trying to climb up next to me. “You cheated.”  
“And?” I move over so there’s room for him to sit next to me, “You never said I had to start at three. You just started counting.”  
“Cheater.”  
“Loser.” The sun was still high in the sky and I could feel it’s warmth on my back. I laid back on the rock and propped my feet on Castiel’s legs. “I haven’t been swimming in a long time.”  
“I was in a Jacuzzi back in December.” I could feel him draw shapes on the tops of my feet and I kicked him.  
I curled my toes and moved some of my hair out of my eyes, “At some fancy resort in the mountains?”  
“It wasn’t as fun as it sounds.”  
“I bet you went skiing too, and you had hot chocolate by the fire.”  
“And yelling matches that should have caused an avalanche.”  
“Oh.”  
“Yeah my family tries to be around each other once a year. It never works out.”  
I sit back up and Cas looks over at me, he looks sad. “One time on New Year’s Eve, I was nine or ten and I decided that I was going to make cabbage and black eye peas for good luck and wealth. Dad came home and told me to stop cooking. He said that anything I touched was cursed to have bad luck.” I could feel Cas wanting to say something to me, but I hurried on. “Anyways, I made him eat some and so did I. A month later he won a two thousand dollar scratch off and I was the one millionth customer at the local Biggerson’s. We were able to eat there for free for a whole year.”  
“I never really liked Biggerson’s. The coffee was good.”  
“One of my suppliers would always make my burgers with extra ingredients.” Cas gives me a sour look but I continue, “Have you ever had a burger that could make you high?” he shakes his head and I lick my lips. “I’m hungry. Let’s grab a burger on the way back.”  
“We probably should get going then.”  
I shrug and jump off the rock, the water seems colder than before but it still feels nice. “Hey-” I see Cas stand up to jump in the lake and it’s very obvious that he’s sporting a hard on.  
He jumps in and swims next to me, “What?”  
“Um…” he’s a little too close, and I couldn’t reach the ground if I tried. “Just,” his lips look really good right now, the coldness of the water really brings out the color against his tanned skin. I want to lean a little bit closer but instead I kick back a few feet, “I just wanted to say that I didn’t get to catch anything today.” I not at the fishing pole sitting dry over on the dock.  
“Sorry.”  
“Whatever. The fish are probably further out until it gets darker.”

When we got back to the house dad’s truck was sitting in the driveway and I noticed the smell of alcohol before Cas did. “Should we check on him?”  
I shook my head and walked into the kitchen. “Tomorrow has always been a really bad day for the both of us.”  
“Are you doing ok?” I wanted to say yes, but instead I just shrugged my shoulders and grabbed a box of cereal. “I thought we were going to get burgers.”  
“Go get burgers.” He looked at me like I was going to break and I pushed him away before he could hug me. “Seriously, I’m fine. I just want to sit here.”  
“Are you sure?”  
I waved him off and headed upstairs to change, “Yeah, just be quick about it. I don’t really want to have to start a movie then have you ask a bunch a questions.” He left and after he disappeared down the street I closed my bathroom door and stripped out of my still wet clothes. I turned the shower on and sat on the floor until there was steam clouding the whole room. When I got in my skin turned red and I sat down. The water was almost too hot and I scooted to the far side of the tub. I was cold from the lake and I needed to get warm.   
Cas was warm. Even up on the rock when I was warm from the sun I could feel him radiating heat beside me.  
I shook my head clear of Cas and I stood up and rinsed the lake off of me. Cas still wasn’t back when I toweled off. So I decided to pull out my old record player and I dusted off one of my favorites. It was The Beatles, their Love album. Mom use to sing to me when I was little, she never sang me a lullaby or some nursery rhyme. She would always sing ‘Hey Jude’ to me, because it was her favorite Beatles song. I don’t know why she did it. But I’m glad she did. Because that was one of the clearest memories I have of her.  
Cas got back after my third time of playing the same song. He stood in my doorway and watched me turn back the stylist. “You know there are better things that play music. Ones that let you play on repeat without having to do it manually.”  
“Vinyl sounds better.”  
“Purist.”  
“Nerd.”  
“So I just got you a burger and fries. I didn’t really know how you liked it. Mustard, and onions ok?”  
“That’s fine.” We ate in silence for a while, until the song came to an end again and he stopped my hand from replaying it.  
There was something in the way he grabbed my hand, “Dean,” I looked down at his fingers wrapped around my wrist and I pulled my hand back, “Let’s listen to the rest of the album.” There was a loud sound from downstairs, followed by even louder cursing. “Should we?”I just shake my head and get up to get a different record. Cas stands beside me as he looks through my collection. “So are you going to bring this all back to your apartment?”  
“I might as well. They’re just wasting away here.” I settle on The Iron Butterflies and skip ahead to ‘In-da-gadda-da-vida’. Cas and I sit back down with our backs pressed up against the side of my bed. The sheets dangle between us and I wonder when it was that I stop trying to care for myself.  
“Oh my God how long is this song?” he stares at the spinning record and I laugh.  
“Almost 18 minutes.”  
“Why?”  
“No idea.” I let myself lean towards him and I feel his hands weave their way through my hair.   
Just as my eyes are closing I feel Cas tug me up and I fall back onto the bed. My eyes open wearily, but Cas is already closing the door to the bathroom. I curl up on my side and listen to the last notes of the song.  
The turn table keeps spinning and I hear it circling and circling but no music comes out.  
I wake up to Cas crawling in the bed, his hands push me to the side closest to the wall, the side he normally takes and I groan. “Your side.”  
The record player has been turned off and the lights are off, “You’re on it.” my eyes open and I see him lying on his back. His own eyes are closed and there’s a soft smile on his lips. “Quit staring.” I close my eyes and try to get comfortable and just when I think that I’m never going to be able to sleep Cas takes hold of my arm and he pulls me closer to him. “Stop moving.” I lean back against his chest and I can feel his steady heart beat; it doesn’t match the crazy pounding of my own. “Are you alright?”   
“Just peachy.” I tuck my head against my chest and will my heart to slow down before it jumps out of my chest. He mumbles something and I turn to ask what he said but his eyes are closed and his mouth is open just a little bit.  
It’s not fair how fast he can fall asleep, but in a few minutes I find my eyes falling back down and I open them on more time, right when his arms circle around my waist and I feel something stir in my gut. Then I fall asleep.  
I wake up in shivers, but it’s not from cold.  
I can hear it. The sounds from downstairs. The cursing. It’s growing louder. I move Cas’s hand from my hip, and try not to think about how nice it felt, I close the door quietly and head downstairs. To where the noise seems to be the loudest.  
When I get to the kitchen I see dad throwing pot and pans and beer bottles littering the ground. “Dad,”  
He turns to look at me and for a moment he looks as if he’s seen a ghost. “What? What do you want?”  
I look at the mess on the ground and I step around a broken plate, “It’s time to go to bed.”  
“You have no right! No right to tell me what to do.” He points an accusing finger at me and I swallow back a response. “You left me here for five years, alone.”  
“You left me alone for 14 years.” He glares at me and I try to hold back my anger, but it was like trying to hold back the rain “I grew up orphaned!”  
“I am your father!” he screams back and I laugh.  
I take a step closer to him and he takes a step back, “Only in blood.” My voice comes out even, it comes out cold. “You stopped being a father when mom and Sam died. But you know what? You had more family. You had a daughter. A daughter who lost her mother and brother in a fire that didn’t get her.” I take another step closer and he takes another step back. I don’t know why he’s acting so afraid of me, or why it feels right, “You were lucky that I didn’t die in that fire. Instead you acted like I had. You acted like you were alone in the world and I had to be raised my other people.”  
“That’s not true.”  
“Tell me what softball team I played for in middle school.”  
I lower my arms down and stare at him; I stare as he struggles to come up with an answer, “How could I possibly know that? It was a long time ago.”  
“Ok, well then tell me about my years in high school, tell me why I transferred schools?” my voice was starting to rise again but I tried to hold it back. I tried to hold everything back.  
Dad looked down at his feet, as if they’d tell him that I was bullied and beaten up and I got into so many fights, and that I had to waist my money on makeup to hide the bruises at school. “I don’t care how bad losing mom was to you. I was still here and you acted like I wasn’t your daughter.”  
I storm upstairs and when I open the door to my bedroom I see Cas sitting up, blinking as the light hit his eyes, “Did you hear that?”  
“Not if you don’t want me to.” I shake my head and grab my keys and wallet from the floor. “Where are you going?”  
“I don’t know. Far.”I tried to leave the room but he grabbed my arm and I whirled on him, “What?” my voice was almost a shout and I saw him flinch but he didn’t loosen his grip.  
“You’re not driving in this condition.” He grabbed the keys out of my hand and when I went to grab them back he held them over his head. “I can take you wherever you need to go.”  
“Why do you even care?”  
“Because you’re not killing yourself! You’re not going to get into a car wreck because you weren’t focusing on the road!” I blinked at him; I had never heard him yell before. All of my anger faded and turned to shame.  
It was a feeling I was use to, “I just wanted to see my mother.”  
His hand around me softened, it was gentle when he pulled me across the room and sat me down in the desk chair. “Alright, but it’s going to be a little chilly, why don’t you put on a jacket and I’ll find your shoes.” When he comes back he hands me a hoodie that doesn’t look like one of mine and a pair of old boots.  
Dad isn’t in the kitchen when we walk back downstairs and I breathe a sigh of relief. “Take my car.” He gets in the driver side and I sit down and lay my head against the window. It feels weird to be on this side of the car but I don’t mind. It’s familiar.  
“Put your seatbelt on.” Cas tells me when he backs out of the driveway. We don’t speak much after that. Only when I tell him where to turn, and when we finally stop in front of the cemetery gates I see him touch the cross behind his ear. “Isn’t it kind of late to be here?” I look at my phone and it’s a little past three in the morning.  
“You afraid?” I walk around to the back of the car and open the truck.  
“No, I just thought that people get into trouble for being at cemeteries so late at night.” I hand him a flashlight and shrug.  
“I’ll just sweet talk my way out of trouble if we get into any.”


	7. Ramble On

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> it's hard to say goodbye

Cas and I sit down on the ground when we reach mom’s grave. Sammy’s next to her. For a while I don’t say anything. I just sit there and stare at the grave markers. One large and one child sized. I don’t remember a lot about Sam. I remember that I wanted him so bad and after he was born I hated him. He was loud and he cried too much and mom had to focus on him more than me. But at the end of the day I would always go into his room, crawl up into his crib, and kiss him goodnight. And every morning I would wake up to mom’s voice and she’d let me hold him for a little bit. I couldn’t believe how heavy a baby could be. He was so damn heavy.  
I learned to write his name when he was only two months old. It was jerky and terrible, but that was the first thing I ever understood when I read it. I loved him and I would have loved growing up with a younger brother, someone to talk to and make fun of and someone to be there for me when all the other kids at school made fun of me and I bet I would do the same for him.  
I just really want him. I want mom.  
I wanted my family to be normal.  
“Hey, hey it’s ok.” Cas’s arms encircled me and I realized that I had started crying. “Dean it’s ok.” I turned my face into his neck and I just let myself go. I cried like I did when I was little and I realized that my family was broken. I had said my last goodnight to Sammy a few hours before the wiring in the walls caused my life to spiral out of control. Cas bent his head down and he brushed some of the hair out of my face, “Are you ok?” I wiped the tears from my cheeks and smiled at him.   
“I wanted someone else to talk to when I was growing up. I wanted someone to talk to about dad and his strict rules and his rude tone. I wanted someone to know me for me.” I shrug my shoulders and pull away from him, “I just wanted to live a normal life.”  
“Well that’s what you have right now.” I rolled my eyes and he shoved me, “You have a job, friends, and a home. That’s not too strange.”  
“Bobby is like my father.” I smiled and realized that my mood was lifting, “And before I met Jo I had no idea about girly things. She’s kind of like a mom, in the sense that she’s taught me a lot.” I touch my side where Sam’s name is and I look at the spot where he’s buried, “And Benny does treat me like his annoying sister.”  
“Well you are annoying.”  
I shove Cas and he laughs. “I think my mom would have liked you.”  
Cas leaves me alone after that, I told him that I’d be fine. After I see him open the car door I turn back to mom and I lay down on the grass beside her. “I know I haven’t been by in a while. I know I haven’t really been there for dad, but he kind of told me if I was leaving to never come back. At least I came back.” I could feel my mood begin to darker so I took a deep breath and went with another topic. “Did you know, that when you first started dating dad that he was the one for you?” I knew there would be no answer but I had been dying to talk about this for a while. “Because I met someone, the guy that was just here, and I…” I look at the dirt under my nails, “I think I like him more than I should. You see I have this rule, I don’t date people. I just don’t want to get hurt, but with him I think I’d like to try.” I can almost see her, I can picture the way she’d be smiling at me, like she knew something I didn’t. And I bet she knows so much more than I ever could.  
After a while of sitting there and telling her about the last five years I start to get too cold.   
Cas is almost asleep when I get back to the car and I have to shove him out of the driver seat. “My car.” He scoots over and I sit down but I don’t start the engine.  
“Are you ok?”  
I can’t look at him, because now that I know what I want to do I can’t do it. I want to do it though. I want to ask him out but I’m worried he doesn’t like me anymore and I’d just make things awkward and I just…  
“Dean?”  
“Do you wanna go on a date?” we both say it at the same time and I turn beat red. I can feel the heat from my cheeks and I stare at my hands like I’ve never seen something so interesting in my life.  
“What?” I jerk my head up at Cas to see if he’s disgusted but all I see is confusion.  
“Would you like to go on a date with me?” I make sure and say everything slowly, because I don’t think I have the courage to ask him out again.  
He doesn’t smile or change the expression on his face; he still looks extremely confused, “Dean, I thought you said you didn’t-”  
“Oh, ok.” I look away from him and grab for the keys but I can’t get the damn car to start.  
Cas grabs my hands and holds it still. “I want to date you Dean. I just thought you didn’t do dating.” I look at our hands and I blush even deeper.  
“I’ve liked you Cas, from the beginning. I just…I didn’t want to date someone, but since I can’t stop thinking of you then I might as well give.” I gesture to the air between us and smile, “I mean I made you come down here for a week.”  
“I would have come down here even if the need wasn’t important.”

It’s nearly dawn by the time I’m pulling up the driveway. I don’t think I want to say anything to my dad and I’m happy he’s not in the living room, but there’s a small part of me that wants him to come out and explain why he’s been such an ass. Oh well.  
Cas and I climb the stairs slowly and when I open the door to my bedroom I feel something stir in the pit of my stomach, now that he knows I like him is it going to be weird? We’ve shared this bed the whole time, just because I know how uncomfortable the couch is and I didn’t want him to wake up to dad coming home drunk late at night. Friends share beds all the time, and sure I might have woken up sometimes to his face in my hair and my hands wrapped around him, but that was accidental. What am I suppose to do now? “I just really want to shower.” Cas drops his coat on the bed and starts to strip his shirt off as he walks to the bathroom. I can’t help but stare at the wings etched into his skin. I toss my own jacket to the ground and fall into bed. I feel like I haven’t slept in years and before I know it I feel Cas’s hand on my shoulder, he’s shaking me awake. “So you’re just going to waste the day away.”  
“Sleep, good.” I roll away from him but I feel in sit down beside me. I roll back over and open one eye. “What?”  
“Isn’t it your last day here?” I groan and sit up. “Don’t you want to see the town, one last time?”  
I do actually, this is where I grew up, and God knows when I’ll be back here. “Yeah, sure.” I stretch my hands over my head. “I’ll have to say goodbye to Missouri too. I didn’t the last time.”  
Cas gets off the bed and runs a hand through his wet hair, “She creeps me out.”  
“She creeps everyone out.” I find a clean pair of pants at the bottom of my bag and a semi decent shirt. The bathroom is hot and stuffy so I change quickly without even bothering to look in the mirror. By the time I brush my teeth Cas is already down stairs. I hope that’s him I hear in the kitchen. It’s not him and I freeze in my tracks when I see dad standing in front of the refrigerator. He looks tired.  
I guess he heard me because he turns around and there’s a look in his eyes that I can’t quiet put my finger on. “Dean?”  
I lean against the door frame, “Yeah?”  
“I know that you like that boy, Castiel. And I also know that he’s a good man.” He walks over to me and for a moment it looks like he’s going to reach out to me, but instead his just grips the fabric of his shirt a little tighter, “I just want you to be happy Dean.”  
I can’t help it I laugh, “That’s rich coming from you.”  
“Look at me, I can never be happy and I don’t think it’s too bad. I get on with life; I just don’t live without your mother.”  
“That’s not good enough.” I can feel my anger coming back, but I force it down and my voice comes out calm. “You had a daughter who grew up an orphan because you couldn’t deal with your problems.”  
He looks down at the ground and I’m taken aback by how upset he looks. I don’t think I can think of a time when he felt guilty for anything he’s ever done to me. It’s unsettling. “I’m sorry Deana. I really am. I wanted to be a father to you, but every time I looked at you I saw your mother, it was worse when you got older because you look just like her.”   
“That still doesn’t excuse you.”  
“Don’t you think I don’t know that?” he shouted. I stepped back without thinking and he saw it.   
I saw something crush inside him and when he blinked he looked normal, like he couldn’t care less about me. “You’re leaving today aren’t you?”  
I nodded and he just turned back to his empty staring at the fridge.  
Cas was in the impala. He was on his phone so I took my time closing the front door and walking over to the driver side. The door was loud and he looked up at me, a pained expression on his face and I could hear someone talking on the other end of the phone. Someone a lot louder that Gabriel had been. “I know mother.” I raised my eyebrows at him but he just turned away. “Listen, I’ll look at everything tomorrow and have it sent off by Sunday.”  
He closed the phone and I saw some of the tension leave his body. “I was thinking about going to eat breakfast at the diner.” I pulled the impala out of the driveway and nudged Cas with one of my hands, “Mind grabbing that Metallica cassette for me?”  
The diner was packed like last time, the only ones there were truckers and old men who looked at me as we made our way inside and managed to sit at the same table as last time. Except this time Cas sat down beside me and I felt myself blush. No one was looking but I felt myself turn red. “When we get back home, where would you like to have our date?”  
I know I was the one who had asked him out, I just didn’t think about the part where we talked. “I don’t care, I’m not a fan of fancy places.” I gestured around the diner and he smiled. “Where ever you want to go would be fine though.”  
“Alright.” Cas turned his head towards me and he brought his forehead down to mine. “Whatever makes you happy.”  
Our waitress came up then, and thankfully it wasn’t that girl from last time. I couldn’t even remember her name. “What can I get you two?” she was middle aged and I saw the way she hid a smile at us.  
“Coffee, black.” I smiled at her ad glanced down at my menu, “And the special please.”  
Cas looked up and took my menu from my hands, “I’d like orange juice and the short stack.”  
After she left Cas turned in his seat and I rolled my eyes, “You stare too much.”  
“Really?” I laughed and he rolled his eyes, “Everyone says that, Balthazar use to say that’s all I did.”  
“Your brother?” I thought of the cross behind Cas’s ear.  
Cas closed his eyes and smiled, “He was such a mess, use to party and drink every time our parents went out of town, and that was basically every weekend. He use to call me a rebel, but he broke more of our parents rules than I ever have.” Cas touches the spot where his tattoo is and I think of Sammy, it must be harder to lose someone after all that time. I barely knew Sam, whereas Cas had years with his brother.  
“Missouri use to tell me that I use fewer words than a caveman.”   
Cas laughs and I nudge him. “At least you have better grammar.”

I have to get gas before we stop by Missouri’s and it’s the same pimple faced teenager behind the counter. Cas decided to stay in the car, and I only went into because even though I just ate I feel like having some gas station fried pie.  
There’s always room for pie.  
At first I think that there’s no one else in the store, but when I get to the back I see a man grabbing a twelve pack out of the fridge. I freeze when I see its Michael, but thankfully he doesn’t see me, or he doesn’t care, because he walks up to the counter and leaves without saying anything to me. I pay for my pie, and I grab Cas candy before heading outside. That’s when I see Michael leaning against the hood of the impala and Cas standing next to the pump. Cas’s shoulder are tense and I fight back the urge to just curse at Michael. I can be civilized, sometimes.  
“So you’re a business major?” Michael was questioning Castiel. I rolled my eyes and flung open the driver side door and tossed in the junk food. When I straightened up I saw both of their eyes on me and I smiled, I don’t know how it looked, but I tried for friendly. By the smile Cas returned, I was anything but friendly. “Hey Dean.”  
“Sup.” I walked around to where Cas was and I pulled the pump out of the impala, when I reached to pay, it was already done and I turned to glare at Cas but he was no longer looking at me.  
“Not really, I didn’t go down that exact path, but I’m somewhere in there.” He was evasive as ever. “I work with my parents and brother. Nothing big.” I tried to hold back a laugh but it came out as a snort and both of them turned to look at me.   
I held up my hands and I saw Michael’s eyes harden. “Well it’s my last day here, so we have to be going.” Cas got into the passenger side and waved politely at Michael, when he turned to wave at me I resisted the urge to flip him off.  
I backed out of the gas station without another look at the man who controlled me for so long.

Missouri was outside in her yard when we pulled up and I saw her give us a brief wave before turning back to pulling up weeds in what seemed like a garden. “About time you showed back up.” I sat down on the porch in front of her and Cas folded his legs underneath him and sat on the ground in the shade.  
“I’m leaving tonight.” I plucked at a strand of hair and twisted it around my finger. “I wanted to say goodbye to you.”  
Missouri stood up and dusted the dirt off of her hands. “Making up for last time?” something twisted in the pit of my stomach and I reached up and grabbed the back of my neck. Guilt flooded through me and I opened my mouth to apologize but she held up a wrinkled hand and I stopped myself. “I’m teasing you child, I understand why you left in such a hurry.”  
I looked down then, because I didn’t want to see the pity in her eyes, but when she grabbed me by the chin and forced me to look at her I saw nothing there but love, “You did what you thought was best, and I don’t know if it was best for you, but I see now that you have what you need. Don’t think that the choices you made so long ago can control the way you live your life right now. Honey you got so much heart in you I think you could suffocate on it.” she dropped her hand to my shoulder and I could see her eyes flicker over to where Cas is. “Deana Winchester I want you to know that you have family. Family isn’t just blood.”  
I swear to God the pressure behind my eyes was caused from the dirt and grass in the air. “I know it.”  
“Well I hate to say it, but I’m actually busy today, so this will have to be it for us.” She bent back down into the weeds and pulled up something that looked broken and twisted. “You best be showing your face around here more often than every five years.”  
“Yes ma’am.” I hoped off her porch and when she didn’t look up at me I pulled on her arm until she was standing up and my arms were around her shoulders. “Thank you.” the words were muffled into her thick hair but I could tell she heard it because her arms tightened around me a little bit more. When she let go of me she turned her attention onto Cas.  
“Get over here.” He dragged himself off the ground and it was almost comical when you saw the height difference. She hugged him and I could tell she was saying something to him, I just couldn’t hear what.  
When they let go of each other Cas nodded his head. I didn’t say anything about it. Instead I waved and headed back to my car.   
The ride was quiet, but not unbearably so. It was a content kind of silence. It was peaceful. Cas didn’t say anything until I was pulling off of the main roads and I turned onto a gravel road. “Where are we going?”  
I thought about no answering him, not to be rude, but mainly because I liked the calm that the silence between us had, “I wanted to show you something. I’ve never been here with someone else. I thought that maybe it was time I stop hiding things from people.” When I pulled off to the side of the road and Cas looked at me questioningly I shrugged my shoulders and climbed out of the car. “Hope you don’t mind a walk.”  
“What exactly are you going to show me?” Cas knocked a branch out of his way as he made his way towards me. I was already a good twenty feet in front of him.   
“It’s a surprise.” I turned around and waited for him to catch up to me, “Dude hurry up.”  
He glared at me and I smiled in return, “I’m not a very outdoorsy person.” He leaned away from a branch and I laughed. “I grew up in the city.”  
“Dude they’re just trees, they’re not going to hurt you.” Cas said something under his breath, then tripped on a tree root and I had to fight back the burst of laughter.   
Instead of getting up Cas just lay there, on his back staring at the sky, “I think it would be wise if you were to go on without me.” He picked up his head and stared at me. I wanted to laugh, or punch him. Or maybe even kiss him, but we were new to this open feelings thing and I didn’t know how to go about it. so instead I just walked back to him and dropped to my knees.  
He propped himself up on his elbows and grinned at me, “What are you smiling at?” I reached my hand down and ran my fingers through his hair. He winced once and I realized he must have hit his head. “Are you ok?”  
Cas rolled his eyes and sat up to where we were close enough I could feel his breath on my cheeks, “No,” I reached my hands up again and cupped his cheeks.  
“What’s wrong?” I ignored the way my heart skipped when he placed his hands on my hips.  
I could feel Cas’s thumbs moving in slow circles along my hip bones. It was nice and it sent a spike of pleasure to my gut. Cas looked like he was going to say something instead in leaned in closer to me, our foreheads barely touched, “Is this alright?” I don’t know what he was asking for but right then I thought that sure, what could he be asking for while were crouched down on a forest floor? I nodded and he brought his chin up to meet mine and our lips met in the process and I missed this. I might have sighed into the kiss, and damn it if Castiel’s lips weren’t the softest thing I’ve ever touched.   
I moved my hands to the back of his head so I could card through his hair and I felt his hands squeeze me tighter. His fingers were digging into the skin above my pants. I leaned into his touch, craving more. But I heard a rustling sound and my mind jerked back to the present. I put my hand on his chest and pulled away. He gave a confused look but I stood up and wiped the dirt from my jeans, “We’ll never make it there if we keep that up.” I offered him my hand and he stood up next to me. “Don’t worry, it’s not that long of a walk.”  
Ten minutes later Cas is throwing me judgmental looks every few steps. “I think its right up here.” I move a branch out of the way and my face falls. “It’s so run down.” I walk up to an old house, more of a shed and put my hand on the wall.  
“This is creepy.” Cas comes to stand behind me.  
“Before dad was really bad he use to take me hunting. Shooting things made him feel better.” I push open the door and it falls off its hinges. “This was where we slept.”  
“Gross.” I throw Cas a look and he shuts his mouth, “Alright but what are we doing here, we’re obviously not going hunting.” Castiel pales at the thought and I smile at him, for a second.  
I never thought I would come back here. “I have good memories of my dad here. I just wanted to see the old place one last time. Dad would take me out here on the promise that we’d go hunting but then we’d just stay up late and he’d tell me stories from anywhere to his days in the army, to what he remembered about his own dad. Sometimes he’d tell me about mom. We never go to do much hunting. I didn’t want to hurt Bambi so instead we just ate smores and he even let me have coffee. It wasn’t the smartest thing to give a nine year old girl, but he didn’t seem to mind that I would run about or hours.”  
My hand falls off the old wood and I turn away from the shed, “Let’s go. I’m hot and sweety.” Castiel grinned at me and I hit his arm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is mostly just dean saying goodbye to lawrence, because even though she's coming back. she doesnt know when


	8. Communication Breakdown

Since Cas and I drove different cars down here I had to drive back alone and this gave me time to think, or over think. My mind kept racing with thoughts of what ifs and maybe’s but I popped in a Zeppelin tape and rolled down the window. I made it home faster than I should have. I felt kind of upset about not being able to drive for a little longer, but I was tired so I pulled into the parking garage of my apartment complex.  
It was tempting to leave all of my stuff in the car, considering I came back with more stuff than I brought down there. I flipped open my phone and sent off two texts, a few minutes later I got a reply from Jo saying that she’ll be here in a little bit to help and as I waited for Charlie to text back I walked up the three flights of stairs.   
Garth was just leaving his apartment as I passed by and he gave me a wide smile, “Thought you were never coming back.”  
I stopped in front of my door and smiled back at him, he was growing on me. “What, and leave this dump? Never.” Garth laughed and I threw him another smile before shouldering open my door. My apartment reeked of old trash and I knew I should have taken it out before leaving. It was almost bad enough that I wanted to just shut the door and never come back.  
Instead I braved another breath and started picking up everything I deemed to be trash and tossed it into a large bag.  
After my second trip downstairs I felt my phone buzz in my pocket. Be there soon! Was all Charlie said.  
My apartment smelled better and looked cleaner than it had in a long time, so I decided to wait on the couch by channel surfing.  
“Were you robbed?” Jo stuck her head in the door and smiled at me, I waved her in and she came to flop down beside me.  
I moved my feet out from underneath her and returned her smile with a glare, “It’s called cleaning Jo.”  
She snorted and I just looked away from her, “So how was Kansas?” her voice was softer and when I turned to look at her she was actually biting her lip.  
Something held me back from reassuring her, “Same old, same old.”  
I stood up from the couch and went to the refrigerator, I knew I had nothing in it; I just didn’t want to do the whole ‘feelings’ thing. “Dean-” she started but I cut her off.  
“What do you want me to say? It’s Lawrence. I saw my dad, I saw everyone who has ever lived there because most people just stay there. It was boring Jo, nothing happened.” She looked like she wanted to say something but I felt my phone go off again and I held up a hand. I smiled at the screen and sent a quick reply.  
“Was that Charlie?” I jerked my head up to Jo.  
“No.”  
“Who was it?” I saw her start to smile and it was terrifying, “Who could make you smile like that?” she stood up off the couch and started walking towards me so I put my phone back in my pocket, only to have it go off again. “Castiel?”  
“I asked him on a date.” Jo looked like she was trying to understand what I just said. “He said yes, I don’t know what or even when the date is going to be but he kissed me and he was with me almost all last week.”  
Jo opened her mouth to say something, but the door was thrown open by Charlie, “Don’t worry, I’m here now.” Her smile faded when she saw the shocked look on Jo’s face and then her eyes flickered over to mine and I could tell she could see how uncomfortable I felt. “What’s happening?”  
I opened my mouth to say something, but Jo beat me to it. “Dean’s going on a date.” Charlie’s jaw dropped, “With Cas.”   
“I fucking knew it would happen!” she screeched and I had to resist the urge to cover my ears.  
Thirty minutes later all three of us were hot and sweaty, but we had most of my belongings in my apartment, it would have been great it the elevator worked. “So Cas-”  
“Oh my God, can I just have time to collect my breath?” I glared at Jo as she carried a light bag of my clothes and I sat down the last box of books. A heavy box of books. Charlie came to my side and picked up one of my worn paper backs.  
“Vonnegut?” she tossed it back down and picked up another, “H. P. Lovecraft, Milton? I didn’t know you could read.” I flipped her off and headed back out my door and to the stair case.  
“Fuck off.”   
There was a woman passing me and she pulled her son closer to her and I cringed a little bit, “Well I guess it makes since considering all these books are almost older than you are. Everything you like is older than you.”   
I heard Jo close my door and she laughed. I considered telling them that’s why I liked them but I just gave up and opened the door to the parking garage one more time. “Your taste in music is older than you,” Jo started listing things off her fingers, “Your leather jacket is older than you, and your car is older than you.” I rolled my eyes and scanned the backseat of my car one last time before shutting the door, “Not to mention Cas is older than you.” I almost dropped my keys in a drain. “How old is he even?”  
“32. Now, I have to work in,” I look at my phone and groan, “six hours, and I really, really need to sleep.”  
“Six whole years.” Charlie and Jo followed me up the flight of stairs again and I wanted to punch them. “That’s quiet an age difference.”   
I hate to say it, but I let all my rage and confusion break free and I turned on them, “Why does it fucking matter so much?” they blinked at me, “Sure I told you that I don’t date people but I’m giving it a chance and I’d like a little more from my friends than just a constant barrage of questions, so if you don’t mind I’m going back up to my bed and I’m going to sleep.” I turned back around and I instantly felt regret but I kept walking up the stairs even as I heard Jo tell me she’s sorry.  
I didn’t fall asleep for the longest time. My phone was in my hand the whole night I considered calling them and apologizing, and when my alarm finally went off I woke up with a crick in my neck and I saw that my phone only had three percent battery life. “Great.”

Bobby gave one look at me and he grunted out a hello before handing me a pot of coffee. I went inside and waited for there to be enough for a few cups. It was eight in the morning and I felt like I had been hit by a freight train.  
“You look like shit sister.” Benny came up beside me and grabbed my shoulder, “You alright?” his voice was like honey and I leaned into his touch.  
I wanted to just fall asleep, “Mm fine.”  
“Yeah, alright.” He pulled out a chair and I sat in it gratefully. “Sugar?” I shook my head and he brought me a cup of coffee, the smell alone took some of the edge off. “Why so tired?”  
He sat down across from me, his own cup of coffee was sitting in my hands. “Why so helpful?”  
“Because I am.”   
I nod my head and nurse the hot cup of coffee. “Same.” He didn’t say anything after that, but he looked up at me every few minutes until Bobby came inside telling us to get to work. I stood up from my chair, knocking back the rest of my coffee. “Dean?” I stopped, with my hand on the door. “There’s a ’68 Malibu out back, it needs body work.” I nod to him and shut the door behind me. The work is tiring and by lunch time I’m sweatier than ever. I could make my own pool if I wanted to.  
I change shirts in the bathroom and come out to help Bobby make sandwiches, “Still tired?”   
“Only because you gave me the most strenuous job.” I pulled out a bottle of ketchup and I heard him laugh, “What?”  
“How does the side look now?”  
Benny comes in then with his hands looking like he plunged them into a vat of motor oil, “Man that Malibu looks great.” I smirk at Bobby and he just sets down the sandwich ingredient down on the table.  
After we’re done eating I feel Bobby’s eyes on me, but I’m too tired to lift my head up, “Do you need to go home?”  
I jerk up and glare at him, “I’m fine Bobby, just a little tired.”  
“I’ll put you on front then.” I glare at him but he doesn’t break, “You look like you’re going to fall asleep right now, and I don’t want you under a car where you might get hurt.”  
I don’t even get a chance to argue because the next thing I know Bobby’s out of the room and Benny is walking out of the back door. I flip them both off.  
No one ever comes in the front, we always get calls and most of them Bobby picks up himself. I lean my head on the front desk and let myself drift. I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I know someone is shaking me awake and I almost fall out of my chair. I left my head up, expecting to see an angry customer but it’s just Cas. “Hello Dean.”  
“What do you want?”  
“Wow, such great people skills.” He looks closer at me, his hand coming up to touch my cheek, “What’s wrong?”  
I yawn and scratch at my back, “Tired.” It’s not a complete lie. “What do you need?”  
“You weren’t answering your phone.” He takes his hand off my face and rubs it on his shirt, “Why are you so gross?”  
“My phone died.” Cas rolls his eyes and I kick my feet up on the desk, “And I was working outside for four straight hours earlier. My hands aren’t even completely clean.” Cas sits down in the chair in front of the desk and smiles at me.  
“I think you look beautiful.”  
I laugh, “So you came all the way out here to tell me that I need to charge my phone?”  
“My brother’s car actually needs a mechanic.” As if to prove his point another man walks through the front door and the first thing I think of is that there’s no way these two are related.  
“Cassie, I think there are better shops in town.” It’s Gabriel, I can tell by his voice.  
I roll my eyes at the man and he just seems to notice me. “Oh, hello.”  
I don’t take my feet off the desk, instead I just let my eyes look him up and down. He seems like an ok guy. “Hey, I’m Dean.” Finally I let my feet drop and I lean over, extending my hand. “You must be Cas’s brother.”  
“Gabriel.” He comes over and grabs my hand, “I don’t think I’ve heard anyone call Cassie, Cas, in a long time.”  
“Whenever Balthazar left.” Cas says it from the chair and I look over at him. “Long story.” It’s always a long story.  
I stand up and brush some of the dirt off my jeans, “Alright let’s take a look at your car.” Gabriel looks like he’s about to say something but I stop him, “I’m a mechanic. I know what I’m doing.”  
“Never said you didn’t Deano.” I roll my eyes and he just smiles even wider. “So are you the girl that Cas has been talking about?” I look over at Cas who blushed and I smiled.  
“Depends on what he’s been saying.” We get to his Car and I have to stop myself from calling him a dumbass. “What the hell did you do to this car?” it was a 2011 Camaro but all I noticed was the dent in the back.   
“Backed into a light pole.” He said it like there was nothing to it, like it wouldn’t cost out the ass to fix.  
I hate rich people. “Alright well you know that the plastic bumper and everything aren’t that cheep, is your insurance going to be paying for this because if so we have to fill out some paper work back at the office.” Cas came up to stand beside me and I felt his finger tips brush against my arm.  
“Yeah, but I don’t really understand that whole process. My boss does though, let me get him.” I turn around to head back inside but I see Bobby standing on the porch looking our way. I wave him over and turn back to Gabriel.  
He’s staring at Bobby, “Well that wasn’t disturbing.”  
I could still feel sleep clouding my thoughts and I put a hand on Cas’s arm and leaned into him. It would be so nice to go back to sleep. “What can I do for you?”  
“It seems that I need to fill out paper work on insurance fees and other boring things.”  
Bobby and him head back inside and I look up at Cas, “He doesn’t look like you that much.”  
Cas shrugs and I find a spot in the shade and sit down. “I was thinking that since tomorrow’s Sunday and you probably don’t have to work that we could do something?”  
“Don’t you ever work?”  
“Right now my job is to make sure Gabriel stays out of trouble.”

“Did you not sleep last night?” my head was resting on Cas’s leg. After his brother sorted everything out at the scrap yard Bobby told me that I should drive them where they needed to go. I didn’t bother going back to work after that, it was already past closing hours so I knew that Bobby would understand.  
I dropped Gabriel off at some coffee shop that I’ve never even bothered to go in, and I sped away before he had the chance to turn around and talk. “I had maybe two hours of sleep. Then at the garage I apparently nodded off for about three hours.” I closed my eyes, Cas sighed up above me but I didn’t look at him to see his reaction. “I can manage on five hours.”  
“Dean that’s not healthy. Why were you up so late?” I want to tell him about Charlie and Jo, but those are my problems. I don’t need to unload that on him. I shrug, or try to with my shoulders pressed up against him. My couch isn’t that big, and two people shouldn’t really be sitting like this but I don’t feel like dragging him to my bed.  
Not when it’s only seven thirty on a Saturday. “What time did you get home yesterday?”  
I opened my eyes, worried that I might actually fall asleep. “Nine? I stopped for gas and got side tracked at a tourist place.” I laugh and he bounces his leg, jostling me. “Don’t laugh, it was about Mammoths.”  
“Nerd.”   
“I helped pack your things Dean, I’m not the only nerd here.” I roll my eyes at him and he drops a hand down to play with my hair.   
“Stop it, you’re making me tired.” I feel him tense up, “It’s ok, ‘m feels nice.” The next thing I remember is Cas picking me up, and then laying me down on my bed. “Time?”  
“Eight.” His voice sounds so quiet, so nice.  
I grab his hand and he comes falling into bed next to me, “It’s too early.” I don’t try to get underneath the covers, instead I pull Cas closer to me and burry my face in his neck. “I like your bed better. Memory foam.”  
I feel Cas laugh and I open my eyes a fraction of an inch, “You’re something else Dean Winchester.”  
“I’m a mess.” I smile at him and he pulls me up to where our faces are at the same height. When he starts kissing along my neck I pull at his shirt. “Cas.”  
“You should sleep.” He tells me, his eyes are blown dark. He looks torn, but as ever Castiel has to have a stick up his ass,  
“Then you shouldn’t kiss me like that.” I push him away and smile. My eyes open wider and I feel myself actually start to wake up. “I hate you.”  
He cocks his head to one side and looks at my throat, then my lips, “Liar.” He swings his legs off of the bed and sits up all in one fluid motion, “I should probably leave.”  
“Why? We’ve shared a bed before Cas.” I reach my hand out to him and for a second he pulls back. My chest tightens.  
“I just thought-” he begins but I tug at his arm.  
“Stop thinking Novak.” he falls back into the bed and I have to move then, dragging the blankets out from underneath me. I feel Cas place one hand on my hip to steady me and I blush. “Sure my apartment is smaller than yours, but I like waking up and not being alone. I know you do to. So stay.”  
I can feel Cas moving around and kicking off his shoes. “Alright Dean.”   
I stand up and head to the front door, locking it, and flipping off the light, and after a moment’s hesitation I kick off my pants. I took a shower earlier and I don’t feel like I’m covered in filth. Cas wraps his arms around me as soon as I crawl back into bed “Don’t expect breakfast.”  
“It’s alright,” he kisses the back of my neck and relax into the mattress. Everything feels perfect, “I can always eat the couch if I get really hungry.”  
I laugh and let myself fall back into sleep.

I wake up to a loud banging and Cas rolling away from me, I hear something like answer the damn door. Before I push myself onto my feet and hold onto the wall. Who the fuck bangs on the door this early in the morning. I shuffle to the door, not even bothering with the peep hole. When I open it, there stands Charlie, looking a little worried. “What time is it?”  
She pales and looks at her wrist, even though she doesn’t wear a watch. “Seven?” she smiles and hands me a bag from McDonalds.  
“I hate you.” but I let her in and I toss the food on the counter. Charlie eyes me and frowns. “Yes you woke me up.”  
“I knew that,” she waves her hand dismissively, “I was wondering what’s up with the iron man underwear?”  
“She’s actually a little boy.” Cas mumbles from behind the couch and Charlie screams.  
I smirk at her, “Oh by the way Cas is here.” She places a hand over her chest and glares behind the couch. I toss the bag of food at Cas and he groans.  
“I think I had a heart attack.”  
“You’ll live.” I sit down on the couch and she does to, after looking behind it. Cas is laying with his face pressed into a pillow and one of his hands is searching the McDonalds bag. “What do you want?”  
“Say I’m sorry?” the sounds of Cas digging around for food stop, but Charlie doesn’t notice that. “I mean I was kind of bothering you about the whole situation. I know this is new to you and I shouldn’t have been making so many jokes.” She looks like she wants to hug so I scoot closer and pat her on the back.   
“I’m fine don’t worry.” I smile at her but she doesn’t look convinced.  
“Are you sure?”  
Out of the corner of my eye I hear Cas get out of the bed and shuffle into the bathroom. Charlie smiles and I roll my eyes, “Peachy.” She leaves before Cas comes out of the bathroom, mumbling something about not wanting to talk about Anna. I nod and she leaves, promising to call me later.  
When Cas comes out he looks worse than normal, “Dude are you ok?”  
He runs a hand through his hair and it sticks up in all directions, well worse than normal, “Tired.”  
“Same.” I stand up and flip off the lights before falling back into bed. “A few more hours won’t hurt anyone.” Cas grunts in reply. “I’ll take that for a yes.” I turn my neck to kiss him and he smiles for the first time all morning.


End file.
